Against the background of the personnel disputes in Robert Habeck’s Ministry of Economic Affairs, the supervisory board of the German Energy Agency (Dena) is re-advertising the chief post of the federal company. This was decided by the supervisory board on Friday, as the energy agency in Berlin announced.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), who was asked to intervene by the CDU, relies on Habeck. “He said that decisions that went wrong and can be criticized must be corrected. That happened,” he said on his trip to Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. “And I assume that everything else will also follow the rules that we have.” Habeck (Greens), on the other hand, is sticking with his controversial State Secretary Patrick Graichen.
Finding committee should be set up more broadly
The reason for the re-tendering is that the new managing director Michael Schäfer, who was actually planned, is the best man of State Secretary Patrick Graichen. But Graichen sat on a selection committee that Schäfer had suggested for the post. Schäfer should no longer become Dena boss. He was supposed to take office on June 15.
The search committee should now be set up more broadly, said Dena. It should be continuously ensured that its members have no actual or potential conflicts of interest of any kind.
Habeck sticks to Graichen
Graichen’s private connections to Schäfer had recently made waves. Union and left demanded Graichen’s resignation as state secretary, CDU general secretary Mario Czaja even questioned Minister Habeck’s integrity because of his personnel policy. Politicians from the coalition partner FDP and from the opposition appealed to Habeck to provide clarification on personal details in his area of responsibility. Graichen and Habeck spoke of a mistake, but Habeck supported his state secretary.
When asked whether Graichen could be sure that he would keep his post, a spokeswoman for the ministry in Berlin replied: “Minister Habeck made a clear statement on this last week, and that applies.”
Other personal connections
In addition to Graichen’s involvement in filling the Dena post, other personal ties in the Ministry of Economic Affairs were also criticized. Two of Habeck’s high-ranking employees have family ties to the Öko-Institut, a research institute that receives commissions from the federal government. State Secretary Graichen’s sister, Verena Graichen, works for the nature conservation organization BUND and, like another brother, for the Öko-Institut. Verena Graichen, in turn, is married to the parliamentary Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Michael Kellner (Greens).
The ministry had already announced in April that Graichen would not be involved in procurement procedures to which the BUND and the Öko-Institut could apply, or the think tank Agora Energiewende, which Graichen headed until the move to the ministry.
A spokeswoman said the ministry published lists on Thursday evening that concerned orders and donations to the Öko-Institut. According to them, most of the projects already existed before the traffic light government. Corresponding lists for Agora and the BUND will also be published soon.
Habeck said that admitting and healing mistakes also means that you have to find the strength to differentiate elsewhere where no mistakes have been made. The “people” who secured energy policy last year and who pushed ahead with the expansion of renewable energies should be protected from “false assumptions”.
