Reuters, HAMBURG, Jun 30, 2017— Summits of world leaders are usually highly choreographed affairs that leave little to chance.
They are held in locations that are easily shielded from demonstrators. And policy differences are papered over by envoys behind closed doors well ahead of time.
But the G20 meeting in Hamburg next week will be different.
Host German Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a high-risk gamble by choosing to hold the summit in the center of the northern port city, partly to show the world that big protests are tolerated in a healthy democracy. This has created a huge challenge for police.
On the policy front, she is determined not to surrender too much ground to U.S. President Donald Trump on climate change, trade and migration, possibly setting the scene for an unusual public clash.
“Quite honestly, it is hard to know what will happen in Hamburg,” said a senior German official who has been involved in the preparations and who declined to be identified. “It will not be a summit of great unity, that’s for sure.”
“The biggest concern is security,” the official said. “If we have another Genoa, it will be a failure,” the official added, referring to the 2001 G8 summit in which protesters engaged in violent clashes with police. One person was shot dead and hundreds were injured.
The stakes are high at the July 7-8 summit for Merkel, who is in the midst of a federal election campaign and can ill afford images of chaos and disharmony.
Her relations with three of the most high-profile participants, Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, are strained.
Trump and Putin will be meeting face-to-face for the first time, an encounter which will be intensely scrutinized and could overshadow the entire summit.
Merkel chose Hamburg, the city where she was born before her father moved the family to communist East Germany, to send a message of openness. It was the nightclubs of Hamburg, which traces its history back to mediaeval times and was badly bombed in World War Two, that helped to launch the Beatles.
The city is one of the biggest trading hubs in Europe. It is home to some of Germany’s biggest media groups and perhaps its most potent symbol of left-wing dissent, the Rote Flora, a former theater in the city’s Sternschanze district that has been occupied by anti-capitalist squatters for nearly three decades.
An additional incentive for Merkel, an avid opera fan, was the opportunity to show off Hamburg’s new architectural marvel, the Elbphilharmonie concert hall, where G20 leaders will gather for dinner on the first evening of the summit.
