Berlin
The head of the transport association should become the new transport senator
Ute Bonde has been managing director of the VBB since May 2023. (archive image). photo
© Monika Skolimowska/dpa
Berlin’s Prime Minister Wegner has lost one of his most important colleagues because of a plagiarism scandal. A successor for Senator Schreiner has now been found.
The 57-year-old Christian Democrat Bonde has been managing director of the VBB since May 2023. Before that, the qualified lawyer worked for the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe for many years, and from 2019 to 2023 she was an authorized representative there. She also gained experience in administration: from 1995 to 2005, Bonde worked in the Senate Department of Finance, then worked in the economic administration for four years.
Choice as a signal?
Her nomination could also be seen as a signal that Wegner and his black-red Senate are serious about expanding public transport and more climate protection. Critics accused him and the previous Senator Schreiner of making a stronger policy for cars again after the previous red-green-red government’s efforts to bring about an ecological transport transition.
Schreiner asked to be released from the black-red Senate last Tuesday after a year in office. The 46-year-old lawyer drew the consequences of the withdrawal of her doctorate. The University of Rostock justified this step with the extent of insufficiently marked text transfers in Schreiner’s dissertation from 2007. Schreiner himself emphasized that he had never intentionally deceived or cheated at any point. “As a private individual, I will therefore appeal against this decision by the faculty.”
Schreiner’s plagiarism affair was not the first involving a prominent Berlin politician. The then Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Franziska Giffey – later Governing Mayor and now Senator for Economic Affairs in Berlin – also resigned from her position in the federal government in 2021 after her doctorate was revoked.