As of: April 5, 2024, 5:29 p.m
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
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Former Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer was criticized for the failed car toll. © Lisa Ducret/dpa
Former Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer probably wants to switch to management consulting. The move caused criticism from several quarters.
Berlin – The former Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) resigned from his Bundestag mandate in April and is therefore leaving parliament early. According to media reports, Scheuer now plans to become a management consultant. However, he encounters a lot of criticism and malice.
Scheuer leaves the Bundestag – and founds two companies
Before his exit, Scheuer founded two companies in February, as Die
Welt
reports: first Positanis Holding GmbH, based in Berlin, then Tancredis GmbH, which belongs to Positanis Holding. The object of the company is the “provision of management consulting services and related services”. Scheuer wants to work as a management consultant after his political career.
It is fitting that he will soon be a member of the “expert advisory board” of the logistics company Mosolf from Baden-Württemberg, which specializes in transport for the automotive industry. This caused malice on the professional network LinkedIn: “Now Mosolf just has to find out what Mr. Scheuer’s area of expertise is. I suspect it has something to do with waste,” writes in user, for example.
He is probably alluding to the fact that the federal government had to pay more than 243 million euros in damages to the operating companies because Scheuer completely failed to introduce a car toll only for foreign vehicles. It was only in December that the Federal Ministry of Transport decided not to take legal action against the former transport minister because of the subsequent costs.
In January, the 49-year-old announced that he would no longer run in the next federal election. The CSU said at the time that he had not taken the step lightly. Before that, according to dpa information, there had been repeated skeptical voices in the Lower Bavaria CSU district association about Scheuer's candidacy again.
Management consultant: “As a customer, you want a consultant who stands for success”
Now the ex-transport minister wants to switch to business. Ralf Strehlau, President of the Federal Association of German Management Consultants (BDU), classifies the career change in an interview with
Wirtschaftswoche
. “Due to his political career, Andreas Scheuer certainly has specialist areas with sufficient skills to advise,” Strehlau told the newspaper. He has a great understanding of political decision-making processes in Berlin and Brussels. “Although I find it difficult to describe this as classic management consulting,” says Strehlau.
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Because he lacks strategic and operational experience when it comes to the classic consulting topics: strategy, marketing, sales, controlling, IT, the management consultant told
Wirtschaftswoche
. His conclusion to Andreas Scheuer: “As a successful politician you learn to process information quickly and to appear skilful. He certainly can. But as a customer you want a consultant who stands for success. The minister didn’t write that into his balance sheet.”
Lobby control calls for a three-year waiting period for former government members
Scheuer's desired advisory role has also attracted critics of lobbying: In view of Scheuer's departure from the Bundestag, the transparency organization Lobbycontrol is calling for a three-year waiting period for former members of the government until they can take on a job in business. The case of the former Federal Transport Minister is one of many that show “that the current rules are too weak,” said managing director Imke Dierßen to the
Table Briefings
portal on Thursday.
Since 2015, there has been a waiting period of 18 months for retired members of the federal government and parliamentary state secretaries. During this time, the federal government may prohibit them from taking on a job in business if the new job could represent a conflict of interest with their former position.
The previous waiting period was “clearly too short at a maximum of 18 months,” Dierßen told the
Germany editorial network
. For example, she criticized the former transport minister's membership in the advisory board of the Baden-Württemberg automobile service provider Mosolf. This has “a flavor,” said Dierßen, “because the company benefits from the contacts and knowledge of the ex-transport minister.”
Scheuer on the Mosolf advisory board has a “taste”
The organization Transparency International demanded that a three-year waiting period should only begin when someone completely leaves federal politics. “From a Transparency perspective, the waiting period regulation would have to be extended from 18 months to three years; at least it should only begin to run when the person in question finally leaves federal political work, including as a representative of the Bundestag,” said Hartmut Bäumer from Transparency International to the RND .
As a former transport minister with a mandate in the Bundestag, Scheuer “continued to maintain and use his good contacts in the industry, especially in the transport sector and the company Mosolf Group,” Bäumer continued. Lobbycontrol also called for a waiting period for members of the Bundestag to be examined.
With material from dpa and AFP