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Former Chancellor Schröder: Legal help
Photo: Christoph Soeder / picture alliance / dpa
The cancellation of former chancellor Gerhard Schröder's equipment may have legal repercussions.
According to SPIEGEL information, Schröder wants to have the Budget Committee's recent decision not to fill several positions legally examined.
According to sources close to the former chancellor, Schröder commissioned the constitutional lawyer Michael Nagel from Hanover to “check the entire process for its legality”.
Nagel had already defended the former Federal President Christian Wulff in the process for possible advantages years ago.
After weeks of internal negotiations, the Budget Committee decided on Thursday to remove Schröder's privileges.
The background is the Social Democrat's refusal to resign from his jobs for Russian companies despite the war in Ukraine.
Schröder's personnel costs recently amounted to around 400,000 euros per year.
There is also concern in the coalition that the decision could be legally vulnerable.
Removing the privileges of a former chancellor is unprecedented.
In several rounds of negotiations, the traffic light coalition partners looked for a way of making their decision not appear as an act of political arbitrariness, but as a rule that should apply to all former chancellors in the future.
They agreed on the wording that from now on former heads of government should be appointed "according to the ongoing obligation from office" and not based on status.
What is meant is that former chancellors should no longer be granted privileges automatically, but only if they also perform tasks that are to a certain extent compatible with the spirit of the office.
For Angela Merkel, who was approved for nine positions just a few months ago, including two drivers, the application has so far not resulted in any consequences.
So far, however, it has been completely open how exactly the “continuing obligation from the office” will be defined.
Among other things, it has not been clarified which activities would still be unproblematic for former chancellors and how it is measured which jobs conflict with the obligations of a former head of government.
