German ex-chancellor Schröder in court in long-running office spat

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder appeared in a Berlin court on Thursday for a hearing in a long-running dispute over his former office in the Bundestag, or parliament, reported dpa.

Schröder is calling on the Bundestag to fund an office and staff, after losing in the first instance at the administrative court in May 2023.

Schröder arrived at the Berlin-Brandenburg Higher Administrative Court (OVG) around 10 minutes before the start of the hearing with his wife Soyeon Schröder-Kim and greeted his lawyers in the courtroom.

He was chancellor from 1998 to 2005 and party chairman of the Social Democrats from 1999 to 2004. Usually, a former chancellor would have the right to an office with staff but the Berlin Administrative Court ruled against this and Schröder appealed.

In May 2022, the Bundestag's budget committee revoked some of his special rights and closed down his office, saying he was no longer fulfilling any obligations in connection with his former activities.

That decision came after the government reorganized the payment of offices for former chancellors, making the funding contingent on whether the ex-politicians actually still take on tasks related to their former office.

Before he was deprived of some of his special rights, Schröder had come under massive criticism - including from within his party - because of his connections to Russia and to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Several of his staff had resigned from their posts after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In the motion passed by the budget committee, however, Schröder's connections to Russian corporations or to Putin had not been mentioned.