With only a few months left in office, US President Joe Biden is going on a farewell tour. Having postponed his original visit because of Hurricane Milton, he will be in Germany on October 18.

Biden is to become the first US president since George H. W. Bush to be awarded the Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will present the award to honor the US president's "services to the German-US friendship and the transatlantic alliance, which Biden has shaped … and strengthened over five decades," Germany's Presidential Office had said in a statement released before the originally planned visit earlier this month.

The US-Europe relationship, and particularly the US-Germany relationship, has been near and dear to Biden. The end of his presidency will mark the end of an era. Will he be the last transatlantic president?

"I think that's a fair assessment," Michelle Egan, a professor at American University in Washington and an expert on US-European relations, told DW. "That's probably because of his long engagement through NATO, through theMunich Security Conference, through being on the [US Senate] Foreign Relations Committee and knowing a lot of leaders in Europe prior to becoming president."

What made Biden a transatlantic president?

Biden was born in 1942 and grew up in a country that helped West Germany rebuild after the Second World War. After the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, he witnessed West Germany become one of the US' most important partners in the Cold War.

"He has been in politics since 1972 and was clearly shaped in its early days, in the foreign policy realm at least, by the experience of the Cold War and Germany being the centerpiece of that conflict," said Peter Sparding of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC).

Biden's experience of foreign policy was also crucial when he was Barack Obama's vice president.

"Obama was very limited in terms of his foreign policy knowledge," said Egan. "That was the reason Biden was put on the ticket. Biden had the connections, the knowledge, the briefings due to his Senate role."

She added that Obama was very popular in Europe because he helped to rebuild the transatlantic relationship after George W. Bush's presidency, but it was Biden who had an emotional connection to the continent.

Parallels between Germany and the US

Germany has been an important partner for the US under Biden. The two countries are among the biggest supporters of Ukraine in its war against Russia and have most emphasized Israel's right to self-defense in the current Middle East conflict. 

Egan pointed out that in addition to similar positions on the international stage, the pair face similar domestic challenges. "In both the United States and Germany, there has been a fracturing of politics."

In the US, Democrats and Republicans form two ideologically distinct camps that are bitterly opposed. In Germany, the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has shown a political divide in the country.

"Both of them are [also] dealing with the issues of borders and border controls," Egan said.

Germany tightened its migration policies after a Syrian man was suspected of stabbing three people to death in Solingen, a city in western Germany, in August. That included controversial border controls on all its borders, even those it shares with other EU countries.

In the US, Egan said, Kamala Harris, the current vice president and the Democratic Party's presidential nominee for the upcoming election, has repeatedly stumbled over immigration policy and security at the US border with Mexico. Biden effectively handed over responsibility to Harris for this policy area at the beginning of his presidency. In his election campaign, Donald Trump, Biden's predecessor and the Republican presidential nominee, has repeatedly criticized irregular migrants and blamed them for many of the US' problems.

The last transatlantic president?

Biden is also seen as the last great transatlantic president because Germany is increasingly less important to US foreign policy than in the past. Sparding, the CSPC analyst, pointed out that in the future, Germany will not be able to rely on the US as a defender of European security.

"The German-American relationship will be different in the future, no matter who the president will be. The US is orienting itself towards the Indo-Pacific and reacting to the rise of what it views as its peer competitor in China. So there will be more expectations …  like [that] Germany take up more responsibilities in Europe or around Europe."

This article was originally written in German.