Emmanuel Thomas, with DPA, Wednesday, April 26, 2023
BERLIN – A Berlin court is due to hear a case in May brought by former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder against the German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, demanding that special rights be restored to him.
The Berlin Administrative Court said a hearing on Schröder’s complaint is scheduled for May 4.
The former German leader, in power from 1998 to 2005, was widely criticized for his involvement with Russian energy companies and his closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the wake of last year’s invasion of Ukraine. Schröder was on the board of Russian energy giant Rosneft for years, for example.
In May last year, the Bundestag deprived Schröder of some of the special privileges afforded to him as an former leader. The German parliament’s budget committee decided, among other things, to close down his office.
Several of his staff resigned from their posts after the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Schröder is suing the Bundestag, demanding that an office with staff be made available to him again, as is customary for ex-chancellors.
However, the budget committee made no mention of Schröder’s connections to Russian corporations or Putin in its motion.
In response, lawyers appointed by Schröder argue that the committee’s resolution was unlawful. The firm took issue with the committee’s claim concerning the former chancellor’s performance of certain duties since departing from his role.
The lawyers argued that “it is not specified what these ‘post-career official duties’ actually are, how their fulfilment or non-fulfilment is to be determined and which procedure is to be followed in this regard,” the firm said in a statement.
