Status: 04/17/2022 09:34 a.m
Nord Stream 2, a controversial foundation, and contacts with Russia are increasingly becoming a problem for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Prime Minister Schwesig. Now the CDU is calling for her resignation.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig is coming under increasing pressure because of her contacts with Russia. CDU foreign affairs expert Norbert Röttgen suggested that the SPD politician resign: “If the circumstances recently described in the media apply, then Ms. Schwesig cannot remain in office; that is completely impossible,” he told the editorial network Germany (RND). Schwesig had “collaborated with a Russian company and consistently and deliberately deceived the public”.
Referring to other SPD politicians such as former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Röttgen added: “It is now the responsibility of the SPD to systematically work through these long-standing, secret entanglements with the Russian state and with companies controlled by Russia.”
Röttgen demands that the SPD systematically review its Russia policy.
Image: dpa
Controversial foundation
The opposition in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania accuses the SPD-led state government of policies that are too pro-Russian. The main focus is on the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the so-called Foundation for Climate and Environmental Protection MV, the purpose of which was to implement the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. With their help, the threat of sanctions from the USA, which wanted to prevent the construction in this way, should be circumvented.
Documents evaluated by various media now show that the old state government under Schwesig, made up of SPD and CDU members, had coordinated intensively with Nord Stream AG when the foundation was founded and that Schwesig must have been in the know.
The majority owner of Nord Stream AG is the Russian state-owned company Gazprom, which also paid the vast majority of the endowment capital: 20 million euros. The state of MV, on the other hand, only added 200,000 euros.
Schwesig admitted mistakes
After the Russian attack on Ukraine, Schwesig admitted to parliament that he had made a mistake by sticking to Nord Stream 2 and setting up the climate protection foundation. However, she rejected the fact that the founding of the foundation had been orchestrated by Nord Stream: The decision to found the foundation was taken on the initiative of the then Minister of Energy and now Minister of the Interior, Christianpegel.
“Of course there were also talks with Nord Stream,” admitted the head of government. “But we made our own decisions in the state government and in the state parliament and nobody else.”
Committee of Inquiry to investigate
From May onwards, a committee of inquiry in the state parliament is to investigate Schwesig’s and the SPD’s contacts with Russia. The role of her predecessor and sponsor, Erwin Sellering, may also play a role – he is now the managing director of the foundation and has so far refused to dissolve it, even against Schwesig’s will.