A breach in the security of the German Chancellor? On Wednesday evening, when Olaf Scholz had just entered the tarmac of Frankfurt airport with his government convoy, a man entered this area that is forbidden to him, passing under the radar of the police. When the chancellor got out of his car, the man in his fifties approached him, shook his hand and hugged him. He was then arrested by security and the prosecutor's office opened an investigation.
"That people say hello to me and greet me, it's not something that impresses me, it's quite normal and I did not feel this situation as dramatic," Olaf Scholz said Friday at a press conference during a visit to Tallinn in Estonia. "The police are doing a good job, I feel safe," he tried to reassure.
"Such an incident must not happen"
His own interior minister, Nancy Faeser, has been less diplomatic about the work of the police and the chancellor's close protection team. "Such an incident must not happen," she told reporters during a trip on Friday. "Those affected will now look very precisely at what happened, what mistakes were made, so that it does not happen again in the future," she added.
The chancellor was returning from an event at the European Central Bank (ECB) when the incident occurred. The police had not seen the man who followed the convoy without authorization. According to Der Spiegel magazine, the intruder appears to have been under the influence of narcotics.
