German chancellor Angela Merkel was seen shaking in public for the third time in just over three weeks, raising renewed fears about the state of her health. Merkel appeared to experience another trembling fit while receiving the Finnish prime minister Antti Rinne in Berlin on Wednesday.
Merkel's trembling fits over the past three weeks have made international headlines, but the Chancellery has been silent about the cause of the attacks.
She later said she was very well and there was "no need to worry", blaming it on residual anxiety over the first period of shaking on June 18. "It'll go away one day just as it arrived," she said.
Merkel's spokeswoman, Ulrike Demmer, said the chancellor had met Rinne as planned and would later appear at a press conference with him, further explaining that he chancellor is in "good form".
Video footage of the official reception for Rinne showed Merkel shaking as the German national anthem was played, although it appeared to be less severe than the first attack on June 18, which occurred when she received the new Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenzky. At the time, she put it down to heat and dehydration. During Zelenzky's visit, the temperatures in Berlin were at nearly 40°C (104°F), but the weather in the capital was much cooler on Wednesday, at around 30°C (86°F).
On June 27, she was seen trembling during a swearing-in ceremony for Germany's justice minister, Christine Lambrecht. She clasped her arms to control the shaking and rejected a glass of water offered to her by an official.
On the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, she was asked about the state of her health and refused to say whether she had consulted a doctor about the trembling fits, only saying: "I have nothing special to report. I feel fine."
Merkel has been chancellor since 2005 and has rarely suffered any illnesses while in office. If she remains in power until the end of the current parliament, she will match the record set by Helmut Kohl, who was chancellor for 16 years. However, she took the first step towards relinquishing power last year, when she stood down as leader of the Christian Democratic Union after 18 years. She was succeeded by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbaur, a woman who is widely recognised as her ideological heir.
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