On 15 June, King Filip will welcome US president Joe Biden. The Palace announced that on Thursday.
The King will welcome the American president in the morning for an audience at the palace. Prime Minister Alexander De Croo will also be present. Biden will take part in the NATO and EU-US summits in Brussels, which will take place on 14 June and 15 June.
Two days earlier, on 13 June, Biden and his wife Jill are received by Queen Elizabeth. Biden will take part in the G7 summit in the south-western English county of Cornwall from 11 to 13 June. Afterwards, Queen Elizabeth will receive Biden and his wife Jill at Windsor Castle.
The American president is the first high-ranking foreign visitor to Elizabeth since the death of her husband Prince Philip, about two months ago. The 95-year-old Queen has received few guests since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis and has made virtually no official visits outside the castle since March last year. Biden is the thirteenth US president she has met in the past seventy years, according to British media. The only president she “missed” was Lyndon B. Johnson.
Biden comes to London relatively quickly and it is his first foreign trip as president. His predecessor Donald Trump did not pay a visit to the Queen until after two years of presidency, showing with some rudeness that he had no understanding of protocols in royal receptions. That was not an obstacle to Trump’s state visit to Britain a year later. Biden has long been an acquaintance of a grandson of the Queen, Prince Harry, now living in the US.
