Status: 05/13/2022 5:28 p.m
In the defense committee, FDP politician Faber caused quite a stir when he prematurely left Chancellor Scholz’s interview. He now intends to step down from his position as speaker on the board.
The FDP defense politician Marcus Faber has offered to resign from his position as spokesman on the defense committee. Faber was reacting to the morning scandal when he left a meeting of the committee with Chancellor Olaf Scholz early.
“Today’s Defense Committee comment was inappropriate and did not do justice to the seriousness of the situation,” Faber wrote on Twitter. “I apologize for this and will offer my group on Tuesday, at their next meeting, to step down from my post as spokesman.”
“No one has submitted a protest note”
Faber had previously contradicted statements that he and other FDP committee members leaving the meeting were a protest against Scholz. Rather, this was done after the end of the session. “Nobody has issued a protest note,” Faber also wrote on Twitter.
Scholz had been asked before the committee, among other things, about the government’s Ukraine policy and, in connection with this, about the stagnation in German arms deliveries. However, Faber left the meeting before it officially ended. Scholz had a chance to declare himself to Ukraine, he criticized. “Unfortunately, many answers were not given. I hope that we can catch up,” he wrote on Twitter.
Strack-Zimmermann: “Action unusual”
The committee chair Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP) had invited Scholz. She did not join Faber’s exodus, she remained in the session. The politician then told the “Rheinische Post” that Faber’s action was “unusual”. “I confess that I was busy chairing the session and didn’t realize it,” she admitted.
According to information from the AFP news agency, Faber’s action was not coordinated in the FDP parliamentary group. From elsewhere in the parliamentary group, it was said to AFP that the chancellor’s appearance was “okay for the first round”. Union defense expert Florian Hahn commented on Faber’s protest that the chancellor’s support in the coalition was apparently “fragile”.