Germany welcomes 'closest friends' Nick Clegg and William Hague to Berlin

The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and the foreign secretary, William Hague, were hailed as "fabulous partners" in Germany today as they made their first joint visit abroad. In Berlin, the German foreign minister and deputy chancellor, Guido Westerwelle, said he felt privileged by the visit of his "closest friends". With the prime minister, David Cameron, in Afghanistan, the three highest ranking members of the government were abroad – leaving the chancellor, George Osborne, as the most senior figure at home. Clegg stressed that he and Hague were delighted to be in "wonderful" Berlin. "When we left this morning it was a slightly grey day in London, and it's beautifully sunny here," he said, adding in fluent German: "I find the famous Berlin air very refreshing." It was, he said, a "sign of the strong relations [between Britain and Germany] that we've chosen to visit Berlin so early on." Cameron also visited the city last month. The press pack and German aides chuckled – more out of surprise than anything else. It is highly unusual for any British politician to utter more than a few German words, let alone be fluent in the language. Of Clegg, who has a German press spokeswoman, Westerwelle said: "I'd like the English journalists to know ... his German is excellent." One foreign ministry observer said: "We're not used to a British politician speaking better German than our politicians speak English". Hague said: "You're witnessing a small piece of British history," pointing out that this was the first time ministers from the two different parties of the coalition had travelled outside the UK together. Clegg stressed the government "intends to be an activistic, active government in European Union affairs". "We will not be standing on the sidelines," he said. "We are stronger together, we are weaker apart." Hague, who had the most work to do to try to win the Germans over, was interviewed in today's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The foreign secretary – who, the paper pointed out, had been the Tory leader who "a decade ago, with his rejection of the euro, radicalised the [Tory] party and led it to election defeat" – added that he was "eager to commit" himself to UK engagement in EU political affairs. It was wrong to suggest Britain wanted the euro to fail, he said, adding: "A healthy euro zone is central to a healthy British economy." Clegg called Germany the "great economic locomotive of the European continent", saying that "the decisions you take have a huge impact on the welfare, prosperity and economic sustainability of everyone in Britain and, indeed, everyone on the continent". Therefore, he said, the countries needed to work together to tackle the crisis, especially regulation of the financial services system. But he delivered a note of caution to Germany and France, whose leaders, Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy, have been urging swifter action on EU financial regulation, especially a ban on naked short selling and derivatives trading. He warned against "regulatory overreaction" that might hit the wrong sections of the financial industry. "We all share a common objective to make sure that regulation is crafted, if necessary redesigned, in order to insulate ourselves from the huge and unsustainable risks that accumulated in the financial services systems in the last few years," he said. But a "regulatory overreaction … may unwittingly penalise part of the financial services system which was not responsible" for the recent woes.