Angela Merkel drinking beer
© REUTERS/ Michaela Rehle
Following this week's NATO and G7 summits, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday that Europe "must take its fate into its own hands" as it sees the Western alliance divided by Brexit as well as Trump's reluctance to uphold the 2015 Paris climate accords, local media reported.

Addressing a crowd at an election rally in Munich, Merkel said that in the last few days, she had "experienced" that Germany and other European countries no longer can "completely rely on others."

On Thursday, Merkel attended the one-day NATO summit in Brussels, spending Friday and Saturday in Italy's Sicilian town of Taormina where the two-day G7 summit took place.

"We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands," she stressed, adding that Germany and other European countries would do their best to stay on good terms with the US and the post-Brexit UK. "We have to fight for our own destiny."

Merkel's comments follow Donald Trump's bid for more time to decide if the US would continue backing the 2015 Paris climate accords. Earlier today, US media reported that the president had allegedly informed his confidants that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change. Secretary of Defense James Mattis subsequently refuted the rumors in an interview with CBS, saying that Trump is open to various positions concerning the US participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the Paris accord that was concluded in 2015 between 194 countries as the full compliance with the agreement would reduce US GDP by $2.5 trillion over the next decade, explaining that it means "factories and plants closing all over the country."

The Paris climate agreement within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, championed by former US President Barack Obama, was ratified by 143 countries. It aims to hold the increase in average global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial level by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, with all the signatory states agreeing to reduce or limit their greenhouse gas emissions.