Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan touched down in Berlin last week under a twenty-one-gun salute, the first state visit a President of the United Arab Emirates has paid to Germany.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz greeted him alongside Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the two governments unveiled a framework meant to survive successive changes of government on either side.
Diplomatic relations between the two countries date to 1972, elevated to a strategic partnership three decades later. Trade has grown steadily since, though the visit’s political register outweighs its commercial one.
Germany’s welcome to Sheikh Mohamed carries a charge no trade calculus fully accounts for. Bilateral trade between Berlin and Abu Dhabi hit €13.56 billion last year, a healthy baseline for any partnership. The diplomatic choreography around the visit points somewhere else.
Four months earlier, the eighteenth session of the UAE-France Strategic Dialogue had already worked through many of the same Gulf security questions Sheikh Mohamed and Merz revisited in Berlin.
The dialogue unfolded against a French-Gulf trade relationship worth €24.9 billion the same year. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh are cultivating direct lines into Europe’s biggest economies of their own.
A Visit Rooted In History
Bonds between Abu Dhabi and Berlin precede the current volatility by half a century. Chancellor Merz travelled to the Emirates in February, and Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the foreign minister, held a series of consultations with German counterparts throughout the year on regional security and maritime protection.
Around two thousand German companies already operate inside the Emirates, treating it as a hub for markets across Africa and Asia. Trade already established between the two economies provided a foundation for the political channel built through the year’s meetings and completed in the President’s three-day visit.
Security Concerns Redefine the Bond
The relationship’s centre of gravity pivoted from commerce toward security after Iran launched missiles and drones at the Emirates in May, an assault its Defence Ministry said its systems intercepted, downing twelve ballistic missiles, three cruise missiles and four drones.
Merz condemned the strikes, declared solidarity with the Emirati people, and demanded Tehran end its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and abandon its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Germany’s head of government named the Emirates directly in a security statement, pairing solidarity with a concrete demand on Hormuz and a direct warning to Tehran over its nuclear ambitions.
Paris Set the Precedent First
France had already staked out comparable territory before Germany’s own state visit occurred. Emmanuel Macron hosted Sheikh Mohamed in Abu Dhabi last December, approved a modernisation of France’s carrier fleet, and discussed cooperation on a future combat aircraft programme with the Emirates.
In May, the eighteenth session of the UAE-France Strategic Dialogue denounced Iranian threats to navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab, citing a recent United Nations Security Council resolution. Paris also courts Saudi Arabia through parallel defence and investment channels, treating Gulf capitals as partners capable of anchoring regional unity independently.
Germany’s state visit tests, in Berlin’s own channel, the same template Paris built in Abu Dhabi.
Capital Trails Political Trust
Capital materialised once the political architecture stood in place. During the visit, the Emirates pledged forty billion euros in new German investment, with a tenth earmarked for Bavaria alone, covering industry, advanced manufacturing and energy infrastructure.
Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE’s industry minister, described Germany as a partner worth committing to for decades. The scale of the pledge confirms how political confidence between governments precedes commercial expansion, reversing an older order in which trade led and diplomacy trailed behind it.
Europe’s Widening Circle of Partners
Berlin and Paris converge today on one conclusion about where their interests lie in the Gulf. The May offensive and the Hormuz threat together pushed European capitals toward states capable of absorbing risk and capital at once, a capacity Doha’s smaller economy cannot equal alone.
Gulf leaders channelled the resolve into the Sakhir Declaration, where they linked sovereignty guarantees to closer energy partnerships with European governments such as Italy and France. Doha’s mediating role with Tehran and Washington persists, but the Gulf’s economic and military strength keeps concentrating in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh.
Berlin’s calculation carries little sentiment. Its industrial economy needs partners able to act decisively as regional stability falters, a point Iran’s May strikes on the Emirates made concretely for German policymakers.
While Sheikh Mohamed’s forty-billion-euro pledge supplies capital, Merz’s own words on the Strait of Hormuz supply political commitment. Germany’s Gulf relationship carries a security dimension its trade statistics do not contain on their own.
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