Germany: ‘Front’ of CDU and FDP executives against Schroeder ‘pro-Russian’ stance

Union and FDP politicians want to oust former Chancellor Schroeder’s office.

Gerhard Schröder has been committed to the Russian energy industry for years, and now a function is to be added to Gazprom, according to an article in the German newspaper Handelsblatt. The outrage in Germany is great, after it became known that the former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was nominated as a candidate for the supervisory board of the Russian state company Gazprom. As a result, calls for repercussions have intensified in Germany.

“If the situation was not so serious, the former chancellor’s behavior is reminiscent of the characters of Loriot, Miller-Ludenside and Dr. Klebner, who meet in a bathtub because one of the two gentlemen got the room number wrong,” she said. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chairman of the Federal Parliament’s defense committee, speaking to Handelsblatt.

On Twitter, the FDP politician said that “we should think specifically about the withdrawal of Gerhard Schroeder’s equipment from a former chancellor.”

The former SPD leader is a disgrace to the country he’s supposedly serving and “willingly allows an authoritarian to pay more than well for it,” he said. publication.

Criticism, however, also came from the CDU-CSU. “A former SPD chancellor cannot make money from Gazprom and the German state at the same time,” CSU defense politician Florian Hahn wrote on Twitter.

CSU parliamentary secretary in the Bundestag Stephen Miller called for a cross-party debate on Schroeder’s resignation. “Anyone who allows them to be paid by emperors does not need money from German taxpayers.”

Müller suggested he was in favor of developing cross-party rules for the former Chancellors’ business.

Bundestag CDU MP Matthias Hower sees the same thing. With Schroeder, “Germany’s top lobby in Russia” will receive the next reward from Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin. “The fact that the German taxpayer must also financially support this indecent behavior of the former chancellor must be tested.”
Russian energy giant Gazprom had announced that Schroeder had been nominated for the supervisory board of the state-owned company Gazprom. Therefore, the Annual General Meeting is scheduled for June 30th.

Schroeder is a friend of Russian President Putin and recently made headlines with pro-Russian statements during the Moscow-West crisis.

The former Chancellor is Chairman of the Shareholder Committee of Nord Stream AG and Chairman of the Board of Nord Stream 2 AG. Both gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea connect Russia and Germany.

Schroeder also heads the supervisory board of Russia’s state-owned energy company Rosneft.

The taxpayers’ association is also asking for consequences. “I urge Mr Schroeder to resign from his public office, his employees and his corporate car,” Michael Jagger, vice president of the Taxpayers’ Union, told Bild. “It lobbies for Russian business interests, using German tax-funded infrastructure.”

CDU foreign policy expert Roderick Kiserveter suspects Schroeder’s calculations for the Kremlin behind Gazprom’s appointment.

This also makes clear “the vague and peculiar position of parts of the SPD in relation to Russia,” the Bundestag MP told Handelsblatt.

“Schroeder’s candidacy can therefore also be seen as a move by Russia to dismantle the German government’s position on the suspension of Nord Stream 2 as a possible sanction and therefore to discredit Germany as a whole.”

The SPD leadership only recently responded to the impression that the former chancellor was overstepping the boundaries of the party leadership on the issue of Russia with his statements on Ukraine. SPD co-chair Lars Klingbaile pointed out that the ruling Social Democrats today agree that the escalation at the moment is clearly coming from Russia.

Regarding Schroeder and the debate on Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Solz also made clear who is responsible for the issue.

“If I understand the constitutional order of the Federal Republic of Germany correctly, there is only one chancellor, and that is me,” Scholz said. Rhineland-Palatinate Prime Minister Malou Meger (SPD) confirmed to the Rheinische Post on Saturday that she did not know anyone in the party who shared Schroeder’s views.