Climate Foundation causes malice
Bundestag argues about Schwerin’s “chimney gate”
03/01/2023 7:52 p.m
At a current hour on the questionable climate foundation in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, shreds fly in the Bundestag: while the Union brands burned tax returns as “chimney gates”, the SPD and Greens remind the CDU of their partisanship for Nord Stream 2.
The Union itself had to take considerable criticism in the Bundestag in the current hour it requested on the events in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania relating to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. MPs from the SPD, Greens and Left accused her of having been “ardent Nord Stream 2 friends” herself. They pointed out that it was a CDU state justice minister who approved the controversial climate foundation MV within 24 hours.
With the current hour, the Union is only about “political slapstick,” said Timon Gremmels from the SPD. This is shown by the fact that she sent CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja into the debate as the first speaker. “You are making a political show here on the back of my state,” said his Social Democratic parliamentary colleague Erik von Malottki. The Green MP Bernhard Herrmann spoke of a “party political circus”.
Like the Union, however, the Greens, FDP and Left Party also demanded a complete clarification of the events, which culminated in a tax officer burning the foundation’s tax files in her fireplace at home.
“This is due to Manuela Schwesig”
Union MPs sharply attacked the Social Democratic Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig and criticized the fact that she had not come to the Bundestag at the current hour. Yes, the CDU governed together with Schwesig when the climate foundation was founded, said the chairman of the CDU state group in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Philipp Amthor. “But all this is not a blank check for Kamin-Gate, it is not a blank check for the fact that the finance minister is now lying to parliament. Manuela Schwesig is responsible for that.” Czaja accused Schwesig of a lack of “political hygiene”. The events in Schwerin are damaging to democracy and the rule of law, to Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and to Germany.
Left parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch rated the current hour as “a fairly transparent attempt by the Union to damage a state government, a federal state and a prime minister”. The CDU supported everything at Nord Stream 2. Of course, the background to the destruction of files would have to be clarified. “But that is the task of the public prosecutor’s office in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and not of amateur prosecutors from the Union.” For the FDP, Hagen Reinhold criticized the fact that the MV climate foundation had awarded contracts worth 165 million euros to 80 companies – “bypassing any procurement law”. And: “A small federal state has been pursuing secondary foreign policy for years, and that, I would think, without any competence.”