BGerman Family Minister Anne Spiegel (Greens) apologized late on Sunday evening for flying to France on a four-week vacation shortly after the flood disaster in the Ahr Valley in 2021 as then Rhineland-Palatinate Environment Minister. “It was a mistake that we went on vacation for so long and I apologize for this mistake.” The Green politician, who has come under criticism, gave personal reasons and a very high burden on her family with four children and her husband from the corona pandemic as the reason for the vacation decision. Her husband suffered a stroke.
Her family needed the vacation “because my husband couldn’t take it anymore,” said the 41-year-old politician, whose voice faltered several times during her statement. She did not comment on the resignation demands from the opposition. But she was also in contact with her ministry while on vacation. In her previous position, Spiegel was also responsible for disaster warnings.
After the resignation of the North Rhine-Westphalian Environment Minister Ulla Heinen-Esser (CDU) because of her stay in Mallorca after the flood disaster, the pressure on Spiegel has also increased. Not only the CDU chairman Friedrich Merz called for the minister’s resignation, but also the JU chairman Tilman Kuban, as well as the parliamentary group chairman of the left in the Bundestag Dietmar Bartsch, who accused her of destroying trust in politics as a whole.
It had previously become known that the Environment Minister at the time in Rhineland-Palatinate had left for a four-week family vacation in France ten days after the flood and had only interrupted it once for a site visit in the Ahr Valley.