As of: 06/16/2022 8:29 p.m
Ex-Chancellor Schröder is fighting for his office in the Bundestag with four employees, which the budget committee has canceled for him. However, there will be no clarifying talks with committee chief Braun, as Schröder wanted.
The chairman of the budget committee, Helge Braun, rejects a conversation with ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder about the deletion of his privileges – in clear words: “I find the whole process undignified,” Braun wrote in a statement.
Schröder had previously requested an interview with Braun through his lawyer. The letter was available to several media who quoted from it. Accordingly, Schröder’s lawyer considers the committee’s decision to be illegal and demands an official decision against which Schröder could then sue if necessary. However, they do not want to go to court at any price, but rather reach an acceptable solution in discussions with Braun.
Braun rejected this suggestion. “The resolutions of the budget committee were passed with a large majority and are now to be implemented by the federal government,” he affirmed. For these “objectively required requirements, I do not need any discussions, especially not with people who communicate with me via letters from lawyers,” Braun continued.
Office deleted, pension continues
In mid-May, the budget committee advocated winding up the former chancellor’s office, for which more than 400,000 euros were paid last year. Formally, the office is to be closed and the staff positions are to be eliminated. However, Schröder will continue to receive his pension and personal protection.
His connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian state-owned companies played no role in the committee’s official reasoning – because it was feared that this could be legally questionable. Schröder’s lawyer now accuses the committee members of not having given sufficient reasons for their decision. The decision was “evidently illegal and unconstitutional”.
Support for the Committee Course
The Göttingen constitutional lawyer Hans Michael Heinig assessed the procedure of the budget committee in an interview with the “Handelsblatt” as legal. He “can’t see any reason to believe that there is a constitutional right to a subsequent appointment,” said Heinig. The office equipment had been granted in accordance with previous state practice for “representational tasks in the interests of the Federal Republic of Germany”. Therefore, there should be consequences if the former chancellor “permanently undercuts” the further performance of such tasks through his own behavior.
Wolfgang Kubicki from the FDP was also convinced that the decision was the right one. In any case, it should be considered whether the office equipment for former chancellors should not be reduced over time and eventually phased out altogether.
The legal policy spokesman for the Union parliamentary group, Günter Krings, rejected the allegations by Schröder’s lawyer and instead called for the old chancellor’s pension to be canceled: “But it is now high time that the Bundestag also acted as a legislator, and that too the former chancellor’s pension will be abolished”. Anyone who lets himself be put up with the system of Russian President Putin cannot at the same time allow himself to be “supported” by the German taxpayer, he also said in the “Handelsblatt”.