The former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, close to Vladimir Putin and holder of several mandates in Russian groups, was deprived of part of his benefits as a former leader, including the allocation of offices, a-t- we learned this Thursday from a parliamentary source. “The parliamentary groups of the coalition have drawn the consequences of the behavior of the former chancellor and lobbyist Gerhard Schröder in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine”, indicates the budget committee of the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament.
The ruling coalition also justifies this decision by the fact that “former Chancellor Schröder no longer assumes any continuing obligations related to his office”. As former Chancellor, he still has the right to several offices in the Chamber of Deputies and to a budget for staff. A privilege, which costs 400,000 euros per year to taxpayers. The former Social Democratic leader, 77 years old and let go in recent months by some of his collaborators, however retains his police protection and his retirement pension as a former chancellor (1998-2005).
Chairman of the shareholders’ committee of Nord Stream AG
More generally, the budget committee asks the government to ensure from now on that “the staffing of former federal chancellors is done according to the continuous obligation arising from their function and not according to their status”. Schröder is thus not exclusively concerned and Angela Merkel herself, in power between 2005 and 2021, could in the future see part of her advantages reduced.
But it is indeed Schröder, who has become a cumbersome figure in Germany, including for the current Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is mainly targeted. The former chancellor has been under pressure since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Unlike most of the former European leaders present before the war in Ukraine in the governing bodies of Russian companies, he did not resign.
Gerhard Schröder thus remains chairman of the shareholders’ committee of Nord Stream AG, the controversial gas pipeline between Russia and Germany suspended in February, and chairman of the supervisory board of Rosneft, Russia’s leading oil group. Gerhard Schröder, since deprived of honors by several cities and targeted by calls for his ousting from the social democratic party SPD, had made it known in April that he had no intention of resigning unless Moscow were to stop its deliveries of gas to Germany. A scenario he said he did not believe.
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