On Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in Washington D.C., visiting President Barack Obama. Their agenda includes trans-Atlantic trade, climate change, counterterrorism and the G7 Summit in June. But the highest priorities are likely to be seemingly intractable conflicts facing the European continent.

Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says Chancellor Merkel and President Obama will discuss the worsening violence between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in Eastern Ukraine. 

Peter Sparding, trans-Atlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, says another subject may be a different conflict: The standoff between the new Greek government, pushing back against the onerous terms of its bailout, and its European creditors.