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Soon out of service: Chancellor Angela Merkel
Photo: MICHAEL KAPPELER / AFP
After the end of her term of office as Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) is to be financed an office with a total of nine employees from tax money.
This emerges from a letter from the Federal Ministry of Finance to Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD), which SPIEGEL has received.
According to the letter, one position in salary group B6 (base salary 10,412 euros) is provided for the management of the office and a deputy.
There are also two positions for speakers and clerks, one position for office clerks and two positions for drivers.
"There is an unavoidable need for the new permanent positions and positions that cannot be met in any other way," writes State Secretary for Finance Bettina Hagedorn.
They would be financed by eliminating currently vacant positions in the Ministry of Defense.
Well above the previously agreed framework
Federal Chancellors and Federal Presidents who are not on duty are entitled to an office in the Bundestag and corresponding employees.
In the past, however, there had been repeated discussions about the scope, and the Federal Audit Office criticized a “lifelong full equipment”.
At the request of the Union, SPD and FDP, the budget committee had actually decided in 2019 to reduce the scope.
According to this, former chancellors should in future be paid a maximum of one office manager, two speakers, one clerk or typist and one "chief driver".
One of the speaker positions should also be dropped after five years.
The current application for Merkel goes well beyond this framework.
“Ms. Merkel was always portrayed as the humble chancellor.
That is obviously over, «said Gesine Lötzsch, budget politician of the Left.
“The lavish furnishing of your future office gives the impression that you want to open a shadow chancellery.
Obviously, the incumbent Finance Minister Scholz is deeply in their debt.
There is no other explanation for this oversupply. "