{"id":762498,"date":"2026-02-13T20:25:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T20:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/762498\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T20:25:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T20:25:20","slug":"german-chancellor-merz-makes-brexit-joke-to-starmer-at-munich-summit-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/762498\/","title":{"rendered":"German chancellor Merz makes Brexit joke to Starmer at Munich summit | News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Germany\u2019s Friedrich Merz quipped to Sir Keir Starmer \u201cI hope you don\u2019t mind about the European flag\u201d as they posed for the cameras in front of a row of flags ahead of their meeting with France\u2019s Emmanuel Macron.<\/p>\n<p>The German chancellor made the Brexit-related joke before the trio sat down for talks on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday (13 February).<\/p>\n<p>The three European powers are known collectively as the E3.<\/p>\n<p>With the media present before their bilateral meeting, Sir Keir warned: \u201cThere\u2019s no UK security without European security. There\u2019s no European security without UK security.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we have to work together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s Friedrich Merz quipped to Sir Keir Starmer \u201cI hope you don\u2019t mind about the European flag\u201d as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-762498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116065201364907670","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}