How this morning begins again for Olaf Scholz: 8.02 a.m. in the Bundestag, Paul-Löbe-Haus. In front of the room where the Defense Committee meets for the special session, Chairwoman Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann greets the Chancellor with the words: “We’ll do that every Friday the 13th.”
The question will be whether the FDP politician really wants that in the end? The morning has another surprise in store.
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It was Strack-Zimmermann who invited Scholz to the committee a few weeks ago, or “heart-quoted,” as some of her fellow MPs called it at the time. On the question of whether Germany is also supplying heavy weapons such as tanks to Ukraine, the chancellor’s office stalled for a long time. In the traffic light government, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann and Anton Hofreiter of the Greens openly identified Scholz as the problem, while Ukraine called for help in fighting Russian troops. The opposition politician Florian Hahn (CSU) said on Friday that Germany reacted “always very cautiously, always late”.
So that is the background to this Friday morning, on which Scholz will take an hour for the MPs.
Call for a coordinator
The FDP, that much is clear from the start, is not willing to give Scholz a comfortable time. Before the start of the meeting, Strack-Zimmermann pushed him along with a new demand: she wanted a central coordinator in the Chancellery who was responsible for arms deliveries. The problem from their point of view: Because the Ministry of Economics, the Defense Department and the Chancellery are involved in these processes, everyone has the impression that things are already going on – because the others are probably already doing it. But then don’t happen.
Strack-Zimmermann would like to see “smoother” processes, she is thinking of Major General Carsten Breuer, whom Scholz brought to the Chancellery to better coordinate decisions in the Corona crisis. Such a person wants her.
According to participants, Scholz once again made the principles of his policy clear at the meeting. Ukraine will be supported as long as the war lasts. And main battle tanks from Germany would not be delivered because the allies had not sent western main battle tanks either. He does not want to comply with the request for a coordinator. At the meeting he is said to have stated that he sees the Bundeswehr Inspector General, Eberhard Zorn, in such a central role and “completely trusts him”.
As far as this point is concerned, Strack-Zimmermann was left empty-handed. Scholz remains too vague for some of her group colleagues. The FDP defense expert Marcus Faber is said to have pointed out to Scholz, whenever he went far, that today it is about Ukraine. He doesn’t stay until the end of the session. “Unfortunately, many answers were not given,” he later wrote on Twitter. Because some other FDP parliamentarians also leave a few minutes before the end – they say they have other appointments – Florian Hahn from the CSU speaks of an “incredible event”. In any case, the meeting ends badly for the committee chair, after all it is her party colleagues who leave the meeting.
When Scholz is asked after the meeting how the appointment went, he says: “Great”.