“Needed the vacation”
Spiegel is silent on demands for resignation
04/11/2022, 04:00 a.m
Visibly devastated, Minister for Family Affairs Spiegel appeared before the press to explain her vacation after the flood disaster. She does not comment on calls for her resignation. Allegedly, she was suggested in advance from her own ranks to make her office available.
Federal Family Minister Anne Spiegel described her four-week family vacation after the flood disaster last summer as a mistake and apologized for it. She justified her decision at the time as Minister for Family and Environment in Rhineland-Palatinate in a memorable appearance before journalists on Sunday evening, among other things, with the health of her husband, who suffered a stroke in March 2019. Her family needed the vacation “because my husband couldn’t take it anymore,” said the 41-year-old Greens politician, who seemed visibly battered and whose voice faltered several times during the performance. “It was a mistake that we went on vacation for so long and I apologize for this mistake.”
As a further justification, the minister stated that Corona had been “an insane challenge” for her family. The pandemic “clearly left its mark” on her four children of daycare and primary school age.
Green tip is silent – board meeting on Monday
Spiegel did not comment on the resignation demands from the opposition. She declined to answer questions. Her party, the Greens, initially gave no comment on Sunday evening when asked. On Monday, the federal executive committee of the party will meet in Husum, Schleswig-Holstein, for a closed conference.
The “Bild” newspaper reports that there was a crisis meeting with the Green Ministers Robert Habeck, Annalena Baerbock, and the party and parliamentary group leaders on Sunday. Spiegel was suggested to resign, but asked to be given another chance, the newspaper said. The Greens did not initially comment on the report.
41-year-old Spiegel and Baerbock, who is the same age, are the youngest members of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s cabinet, which was sworn in just four months ago. At the weekend, a report by “Bild am Sonntag” revealed that the then Environment Minister in Rhineland-Palatinate had left for a four-week family vacation in France ten days after the flood disaster and had only interrupted it once for a visit to the Ahr Valley.
“I would have canceled my vacation immediately”
In her emotional statement, Spiegel detailed her private motives. She admitted that she had overwhelmed herself with an accumulation of offices. First she decided to take over the top candidate for the state elections in addition to her position as Minister for Family Affairs in Rhineland-Palatinate. She described it as a mistake that from January 2021 she also took over the management of the Ministry of the Environment, with which she later shared responsibility for dealing with the flood disaster. “I took this task very seriously, and it was too much. That got us over the border as a family,” admitted Spiegel.
The decision to go on vacation was a serious balancing act between her responsibility as a minister and the responsibility as a mother with four small children who did not get through the corona pandemic well. During her vacation she was always available, made phone calls and got information. “If there had been any reason to cancel the vacation, I would have done so immediately,” said Spiegel.
However, the family minister had to correct information that she had given to “Bild am Sonntag” on Saturday. Contrary to what was originally announced, she did not join the cabinet meetings from her vacation. The meetings were listed in their calendar. However, a review of the cabinet minutes revealed on Sunday that she did not take part.
CDU politicians call for dismissal
CDU leader Friedrich Merz had already called for Spiegel’s dismissal before the family minister’s statement. Several other Union politicians and the family policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group, Martin Reichardt, demanded Spiegel’s resignation. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the local Environment Minister Ursula Heinen-Esser resigned from her post on Thursday after it became known that the 56-year-old minister had met with other government members for a weekend a few days after the flood disaster on the holiday island of Mallorca to discuss the celebrating her husband’s birthday. The CDU politician had given false information about the duration and reason for her stay. For the CDU, the “Mallorca affair” comes at an inopportune time, on May 15 there will be elections in the federal state.
The Parliamentary State Secretary in the Family Ministry, Sven Lehmann, defended his Green party colleague Spiegel on Twitter against demands for his resignation. “The example of Anne Spiegel is also used to discuss how humane politics can be,” he wrote. “Politicians are people. People can make mistakes or make decisions in hard deliberations that they later regret. If you don’t want machines in politics, you get people.”
In the flood disaster in mid-July 2021, more than 180 people died in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, 134 of them in the Ahr Valley. Around 750 people were injured in Rhineland-Palatinate and large parts of the infrastructure and thousands of houses were destroyed. Many people still live in emergency or alternative quarters.