No violation of the SPD party order could be proven against the former chancellor.
(Photo: dpa)
Hanover, Berlin The former Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder did not violate the party order of the SPD with his commitment to Russian state-owned companies. A violation could not be proven to Schröder, the arbitration commission of the SPD sub-district Hanover decided on Monday in the first instance.
The Commission sees no basis for a complaint or even an exclusion from the party. The decision can be appealed within two weeks.
17 SPD branches had applied for party order proceedings against Schröder, and there were other applications that did not meet the formal requirements. The arbitration commission in Hanover had negotiated the procedure in public in mid-July, but with the media excluded. Schröder himself neither appeared in person nor sent a lawyer.
The arbitration commission of the SPD sub-district Hanover region is responsible for the procedure because Schröder is a member of the associated SPD local association Oststadt-Zoo. However, up to two other instances are possible: in the SPD district of Hanover and in the SPD Federal Arbitration Commission.
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An exclusion was considered unlikely because of the high hurdles. At the beginning of the proceedings, the party lawyer Sophie Schönberger admitted in an interview with the Handelsblatt that the official line of the SPD on Russia in the past had by no means been so clear “that it would be easy to determine at what point the party principles were violated at all “.
>> Read here: The case of Gerhard Schröder: Why the exclusion process has little chance of success
Schröder, now 78, has long been criticized for his closeness to Russia. He is considered a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin and worked for Russian energy companies for years. According to the Kremlin, Schröder was in the Russian capital Moscow at the end of July.
With regard to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Schröder stated that it was the Russian government’s responsibility to end the war. However, the ties to Russia should not be completely severed. In July, the former chancellor also declared that he wanted to keep in touch with Putin and did not believe in a military solution in Ukraine. SPD leader Saskia Esken had already suggested to Schröder in April that he leave the party because of his statements on the Ukraine war.
Schröder is not alone in the SPD
However, the former chancellor is not completely isolated in the SPD. There are also many SPD members who show solidarity with Schröder, said the managing director of the SPD district in Hanover, Christoph Matterne, on the sidelines of the party organization process. “They say: If Gerhard Schröder is excluded, then it’s over for me after 40 years.”
Esken had sharply criticized Schröder for his recent statements about Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s alleged willingness to negotiate in the Ukraine war. “Gerhard Schröder does not act as an ex-chancellor, but as a businessman, and that’s how we should interpret his statements,” she told the newspapers of the Funke media group. “With everything he does and says, he acts in his own interest and in that of his business partners.”
At the end of July, the former chancellor paid another visit to Putin in Moscow and then gave an interview to Stern magazine and the broadcasters RTL and ntv, in which he said, with regard to the Ukraine war: “The good news is that the Kremlin wants it a negotiated solution.” This and other statements made in the interview met with massive criticism from all parties in Germany, but also internationally.
If one believed the Secretary General of the SPD, Kevin Kühnert, the party would not have been expelled anyway. “German party law and, by the way, the statute of the SPD do not provide for party exclusions for violent differences of opinion, provocations or business interests,” Kühnert told the “Rheinische Post” in February.
More: Read all developments in the Ukraine war in the live blog.