The FDP Vice sees “no reasonable reason not to open the Nord Stream 2”.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin The FDP politician Konstantin Kuhle recognized some time ago that his fellow party member Wolfgang Kubicki likes to throw a punch in political debates. And that triggers more irritating shaking of the head than reaping broad approval. “Wolfgang is getting a little weird,” said Kuhle in February 2020 on the talk show “Chez Krömer”. And he attested that the now 70-year-old had “always had a slight bump”, so he wasn’t quite sane.
In view of Kuhle’s blunt statement, one might think that the liberals would have long since become accustomed to their enfant terrible and that nothing could surprise them anymore. But what Kubicki now said in the debate about the gas supply with a view to the winter prompted a whole series of leading FDP politicians to rebuke and clarify things to calm things down.
The coalition partners of the SPD and the Greens also strongly opposed the liberal because he took up an issue that the government had long since cleared up. After the start of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, the German government ruled out the commissioning of Nord Stream 2. In view of the gas crisis, Kubicki is now demanding the exact opposite.
In order to fill the gas storage tanks for the winter, the Baltic Sea pipeline should be opened as soon as possible, he told the editorial network Germany. There is “no good reason not to open the Nord Stream 2”. If Russia’s President Vladimir Putin then stops supplying gas, Germany has lost nothing. “If more gas reaches us in this way, perhaps even the entire contractually guaranteed quantity, that will help people not have to freeze in winter and our industry will not suffer serious damage,” emphasized Kubicki. Ensuring this is the top priority of the federal government.
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The government in the person of Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner sees it completely differently. The head of the FDP dismissed his party deputy’s demand as “wrong and absurd”. The explanation for this was provided by FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Saai. He recalled the foreign policy dimension that would be associated with the commissioning of the pipeline. “The great unity within the EU and NATO against Putin’s war must not be jeopardized, because it ultimately also serves our own security,” he said, opposing Kubicki’s proposal. Other liberals made similar statements.
“I would become a drinker in Berlin, maybe also a whoremonger”
For the Greens, party leader Omid Nouripour declared Kubicki’s demand pointless. If Putin doesn’t deliver, then he doesn’t deliver, he said. It is “completely irrelevant how many empty pipelines are currently open”. The SPD foreign policy expert Nils Schmid accused Kubicki on t-online of once again taking over Russian propaganda and making himself the henchman of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The problem is not that Nord Stream 2 is not operational, but that Putin lacks the political will to supply more gas.
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Such criticism is unlikely to impress Kubicki. He does not accept the fact that his advances could involve joy in provocation or even troublesomeness. “I don’t do this because I enjoy annoying someone or because I need more profile,” he said recently on the occasion of his 70th birthday. “I’m well known and this is my last term.”
Kubicki is always fundamental in political disputes, as he emphasizes. He cites the corona pandemic as an example. A topic on which the balance between the protection of freedom and health was debated for months. He is a lawyer, says Kubicki. “Why is it expected that I, against my inner convictions, allow myself to be carried away to measures that I consider to be effectively wrong, even illegal. That is a real impertinence.”
Kubicki once viewed political life in Berlin as an impertinence. “I would become a drinker in Berlin, maybe also a whoremonger,” he once said in an interview before moving to the Bundestag. But it hasn’t come to that.
“I’ve matured morally and my wife is often with me in Berlin,” he said. Kubicki promised her that he would no longer stand as a candidate in the 2025 federal election. “I’m noticing my age now, not in my head, but physically.” After long car journeys, getting out is sometimes harder than it used to be.
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