Not so long ago, Germany benefited like no other country from cheap energy from Russia. Conversely, the tendency to impose really tough sanctions on the former preferred supplier is now proportionally small. According to its own statements, Germany has frozen only 95.5 million euros in Russian assets. Details are confidential.
In Switzerland, on the other hand, Russian assets totaling 7.4 billion euros are now on hold – funds in bank accounts and real estate. Even in the small Netherlands, 500 million euros are blocked. Of course, that is still little compared to the situation in Great Britain: many rich Russians have moved to London in particular. Secretary of State Liz Truss recently announced that her country had frozen 321 billion euros in oligarch assets. We write about the advantages and disadvantages of an energy embargo against Russia in the big weekend title: “Way out or fiasco?”
A special kind of Jamaican coalition meets at noon today at 1 p.m. The parliamentary groups of the CDU, FDP and the Greens – all of them in the opposition – set up a parliamentary committee of inquiry. It’s about Nord Stream 2 and the surrender of German energy security to a dictatorial system that turns out to be fascist and belligerent.
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How did it come about that a foundation “Climate and Environmental Protection MV” took care of the final phase of the Baltic Sea gas pipeline construction, quite obviously as a Gazprom front organization to circumvent US sanctions? There have been a number of apologies recently, for example from the Social Democrats Manuela Schwesig and Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
And who knows: Maybe we will learn from “Coastal Jamaica” exactly what you have to say “so sorry” for everything.
Rolf Mützenich doesn’t want to know anything about a special “Putin connection” of the SPD. The head of the parliamentary group told my colleagues in an interview that the party had “not only repeatedly checked its political steps, but also corrected them when necessary.” That’s why you don’t need the commission of inquiry demanded by the CDU (which deals very much with Angela Merkel would have to deal with). Mützenich has pointed opinions on omnipresent geopolitics:
- The Social Democrat thinks that Russia is not as isolated as many think. If you look at the abstentions and the absent votes at the UN General Assembly on Russia, more than half of the current world population would come together, including five nuclear states: “We must do everything we can to break these supporters out of siding with Putin .”
- According to Mützenich, it bothers him that democracies such as India or moderately developed democracies such as South Africa or Sri Lanka have not criticized the attack on Ukraine: “Not only is a new world order emerging, there is also a new economic order emerging that reflects our self-image , but will also fundamentally challenge the conditions in which we do business.”
- The group leader also explains that he can only advise Germany and Europe to reduce their dependency on China – with a view to the supply chains: “We didn’t even have enough masks at the beginning of the pandemic.”
As Kurt Tucholsky wrote so beautifully: “Anyone who pushes skittles in public has to put up with being counted how many he has hit.”
Major crises are tests for politicians, such as the flood disaster in the Ahr Valley in summer 2021. North Rhine-Westphalia’s Environment Minister Ursula Heinen-Esser (CDU), who resigned yesterday because she was unable to communicate her actions, failed the aptitude test. The salami tactic was not to be conveyed, only little by little to present the truth about their extended Mallorca vacation during the flood crisis period. It was recently announced that her husband’s birthday was being celebrated on the island, which also attracted three party friends: Home and Construction Minister Ina Scharrenbach, Minister for Europe Stephan Holthoff-Pförtner (both CDU) and today’s member of the Bundestag Serap Güler.
After the resignation in North Rhine-Westphalia, the current Federal Minister for Family Affairs and then Rhineland-Palatinate Minister of the Environment Anne Spiegel moved into focus. She only read important press releases cursorily, downplayed the danger and, on the day after the flood of the century, urged the government spokesman to “word it”. You have to be prepared for a “blame game”. The fact that the Green politician was so interested in her standing in public and apparently less in the devastation in her country upsets the state CDU: “Ms. Heinen-Esser’s resignation must be a role model for Anne Spiegel. Her resignation is long overdue.”
Apropos: the public brought Karl Lauterbach into office, the public will drive him out of office. The falling polls for the Federal Minister of Health are a result of his mistakes, clumsiness and lack of communication. Yesterday, the vaccination he propagated from the age of 60 failed with a bang: 296 yes votes, 378 no votes. Lauterbach tweeted: “Now fighting Corona will be much more difficult in the fall.” And: “It doesn’t help to assign political blame. We continue.”
He himself is already recommended “talk show quarantine”. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who tackled the issue aggressively at an early stage and probably relied on his popular media channel surfer to complete the project, is particularly damaged.
Thomas Buberl, 49, stands out among French business leaders. The head of the insurance group Axa is still quite young for Patron standards and also German. In the Handelsblatt interview, he comments on Sunday’s first round of the presidential election, which, according to relevant polls, is a tight race between the social-liberal defender Emmanuel Macron and the right-wing challenger Marine Le Pen.
A victory for Le Pen would “open up a phase of uncertainty for France and Europe,” says Buberl. There is a certain danger that the politician will appeal to those who feel socially outclassed with her strategy to increase purchasing power. According to the Axa boss, one positive aspect of Macron’s balance sheet is that the country’s reputation among investors has improved and competitiveness has increased as a result of reforms.
Buberl also has advice: “We have to get back to basics. That means that politicians spend more time with the citizens and listen to them.”
My cultural tip for the weekend: “Strange Game” by Mick Jagger. It’s an amazingly laid-back song from a rock veteran with an astounding career, whose band The Rolling Stones, humbled by the blues, began gigging 60 years ago. With the title song of the Apple TV series “Slow Horses”, a cooperation with the film composer Daniel Pemberton, Jagger uses all PR means to introduce his band’s summer European tour.
The streaming series is based on a gripping book by Mick Herron about an old-fashioned secret service agent emerging from the Cold War we are now reliving. Jagger speaks in the weekly publication “Die Zeit” about how the parents at the dinner table would have constantly talked about war: “Now we have one right in front of our own front door… it gets you down.”
And then there is Andrea Verpoorten, 48, cousin of eggnog supplier William Verpoorten and office manager of CDU leader Friedrich Merz at party headquarters for nine and a half weeks. In Berlin they already sang: “Ei, Ei, Ei, Verpoorten”. But now it’s already over, as always in such cases “by mutual agreement”. The Cologne politician herself speaks to “Bild” that the “expectations” did not fit. One expectation was to ensure a higher proportion of women in the now male-dominated CDU.
But we look down in shame and suddenly think of a Robespierre saying: “There is no omelet without breaking eggs.”
I wish you a relaxing weekend, perhaps painting your first Easter eggs.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs