German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday urged former leader Gerhard Schroeder to quit his posts with Russian energy giants Rosneft and Gazprom following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I find that it is not correct for Gerhard Schroeder to hold these offices. And I think it would be correct for him to give them up,” said Scholz in an interview with public broadcaster ZDF.
Schroeder, who was Germany’s chancellor from 1998 to 2005, is chairman of the board of directors of Russian oil giant Rosneft.
The 77-year-old, who like Scholz is a member of the Social Democratic Party, is also due to join the supervisory board gas giant Gazprom in June.
The gas group is behind the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia, which has been halted by Scholz in one of the West’s first responses to the war in Ukraine.
Schroeder himself signed off on the first Nord Stream in his final weeks in office, and currently heads the pipeline’s shareholders’ committee.
His stubborn refusal to cut loose those links led his aides to walk out on him this week, and Bundesliga football club Borussia Dortmund has also stripped him of his honorary membership.
The SPD’s leadership has also demanded that Schroeder drop the Russian energy jobs.
Anyone who has held public office “must be able to justify himself … before the public in the democracy and in the state and this responsibility does not end when one stops exercising his office but it goes on,” said Scholz.
The chancellor added that he hoped Schroeder’s friends will manage to “convince him to reconsider his decisions from the past”.
“I say it also because I worked well with him in the time when he was active in politics and that’s why it is very important to me that he makes this decision,” said Scholz.
hmn/lc
© Agence France-Presse
