war against Ukraine
NRW Prime Minister: Schröder interview must have consequences
North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU). Photo: Henning Kaiser/dpa
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Gerhard Schröder has been heavily criticized for not giving up his posts at Russian companies despite the Russian attack on Ukraine. An interview has now reignited the debate.
After a widely acclaimed interview with former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD), North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) called for consequences from the SPD leadership.
“The interview in the “New York Times” is quite disturbing and it must have consequences,” said Wüst on Sunday in the political talk “The Right Questions” on Bild TV. “The entire SPD leadership said: If Gerhard Schröder sticks to his well-paid mandates with Putin, he can no longer be a member of the SPD.” Now he says that’s exactly what he intends to do. “That’s why the SPD is now called upon to put their words into action.”
Schröder has been heavily criticized in Germany for not giving up his posts at Russian energy companies despite the Russian attack on Ukraine. The SPD leadership has long distanced itself from Schröder. The SPD chairmen Saskia Esken and Lars Klingbeil wrote to him at the end of February asking him to resign from his position at the state-owned company.
In an article published in the New York Times on Saturday, Schröder said he would resign if Russian President Vladimir Putin cut off gas to Germany and the European Union. He does not expect such a scenario. But if it did come to that, “then I would resign”. From what post, he did not say.
Schröder is the chairman of the supervisory board of the Russian state energy giant Rosneft and chairman of the shareholders’ committee of the pipeline company Nord Stream. He is also still entered in the responsible commercial register as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Nord Stream 2 AG.
In the course of the debate about Schröder’s post, Wüst suggested a new regulation for the salaries of former chancellors on “Bild TV”. Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko told Bild that Schröder’s accounts should be frozen if he continued in his post. Klitschko also criticized Schröder’s statements in the “New York Times”. “In view of his propaganda for the Kremlin, one wonders why Schröder lives in Hanover and not in Moscow.”