 to shoulder this responsibility.” This marked the continuation of Germany’s persistent pursuit of more responsibility in the UN, a policy in keeping with Germany’s leading role in Europe and engagement in humanitarian support in the world’s crisis zones and poorer areas.
The move of the central government to Berlin was completed in late September, just before the 10th anniversary celebrations of the reunification, when the Bundesrat settled into a renovated 100-year-old palace near Potsdamer Platz. The Bundestag had moved into its spectacular new domed building in 1999. At the end of October parliament finally approved a budget for the controversial memorial to Holocaust victims, desogned by New York architect Peter Eisenman, to be constructed in the capital near the Brandenburg Gate. Meanwhile in Hanover, Expo 2000, Germany’s first-ever world’s fair, completed its five-month run of culture, technology, environmentalism, and fun for the family, attracting some 18.1 million visitors.
In late November Germany’s first case of an animal infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE; or mad-cow disease) was reported by the Agriculture Ministry amid a series of similar acknowledgments by health officials in other European countries. When a second German case surfaced a few days later and with public confidence in beef thoroughly shaken, Chancellor Schröder called for a Europe-wide ban on meat-based animal feeds.
In early December the Bundesrat ratified a law that gave same-sex couples full legal standing. Beginning in 2001 gay and lesbian couples in Germany would be able to register their relationships and enjoy the same inheritance and tenant rights as heterosexual couples.