Ex-chancellor Schröder still finds Nord Stream 2 right

Ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder is still standing for the Baltic Sea line Nord Stream 2 for Russian natural gas. The 81-year-old SPD politician comments in a letter to the parliamentary committee of inquiry of the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, whose two charges to testify to testimony he had canceled out of health start-ups. The fact that he was now in Hanover at the election of the new Lower Saxony Prime Minister Olaf Lies (SPD) has not been hidden in Schwerin. “I wish him that he will soon be healthy enough to testify before the committee of inquiry,” explains Sebastian Ehlers, for example, the CDU chairman. “The committee of inquiry is advised on the further procedure.”

In his letter, Schröder explains that a stable recovery from his burnout disease “by no means safe this year”. Until then, unusual stressful situations should be avoided “especially those who last more than an hour and during which not everyone involved can take my health situation into account”. The German press agency has the letter. The “Bild” newspaper had previously reported about it.

In his role in Nord Stream 2, he writes in the letter that Germany’s industry needs safe and cheap energy in order to be capable of world market. Since the renewables are still not reliably available around the clock and in every season and electricity should not be produced in nuclear residents, “I am for natural gas and a pipeline is more environmentally friendly than a tanker powered with heavy oil that brings us LNG gas,” writes Schröder. It is about a transition period, “and this still seems unpredictable to me today”.

As chairman of the Nord Stream 2 AG board of directors, he spoke to the Russian President Vladimir Putin about the natural gas pipe, Schröder writes. The pipeline was completed at the end of 2021, but did not go into operation in February 2022 due to the Russian robbery. Later explosions were badly damaged by the pipeline and the north stream 1, which had been built years earlier.

He continued to talk to Putin about the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania climate protection foundation, Schröder continued. According to a decision by the Schwerin state parliament in early 2021, the foundation was primarily founded to protect the Pipeline project from the USA’s threats against sanctions against participating companies and to finish it.

The committee of inquiry wants to find out who the idea of ​​founding the foundation came from and whether Russia has had an impact on decisions of politics in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.