He is considered one of the last defenders of Vladimir Putin: Gerhard Schröder. Now the former chancellor, who among other things is the head of the supervisory board at the Russian state energy company Rosneft, is to be thrown out of the SPD. In Berlin, the board of the Treptow-Köpenick district association is working on a corresponding application.
“Here at the grassroots level, Schröder’s adherence to Putin has long been viewed as very strange,” said the district association’s co-chairman, Christopher Jäschke, to the Berliner Zeitung. “Our members have the feeling that this is party-damaging behavior,” said Jäschke. At a meeting of the district board next week, a decision to exclude Schröder is to be taken and then an application to be submitted to a party arbitration court. However, it may be some time before the arbitral tribunal makes a final decision – as the case of the former Berlin Senator for Finance, Thilo Sarrazin, shows. This was only expelled from the SPD at the third attempt after more than ten years.
Jäschke is in line with Tom Schreiber, the domestic spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group in the House of Representatives, who also comes from Treptow-Köpenick. “We have to change,” says Schreiber of the Berliner Zeitung, referring to the SPD, in which many top politicians have long advocated a pro-Russian course.
Since the Russian army launched its war of aggression against Ukraine, many have changed their minds about Putin. Tenor: You were wrong that Putin is an aggressor and needs to be isolated internationally.
Schröder has not heard anything like that publicly. More and more party friends are accusing him of that. That is “no longer compatible with social democratic values”.
“Schröder had the time to position himself publicly, to say he was wrong,” says Tom Schreiber. Schröder is a pity “by doing nothing to the party”. After all, he is steering “a clear counter-course” to Chancellor Scholz.
The latest trigger was reports that Schröder was losing his longtime office manager and speechwriter Albrecht Funk and three other employees in his office. They give up their posts, the news portal The Pioneer and the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Tuesday. This would mean that the former chancellor’s office would be deserted.
Allegedly there have been differences over the attack on Ukraine. Funk is said to have recommended that his boss quickly and clearly distance himself from Putin and resign from all supervisory board mandates in Russian companies. So far nothing is known about such steps by Schröder.
“The whole world is making a cut with Putin – just not Schröder,” criticizes Schreiber.