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The Bundestag has decided that Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) must leave the federal-state conference on the corona pandemic and come to parliament immediately to take part in an ongoing debate on Russia policy.
The Greens, Leftists, FDP and AfD demanded Scholz's appearance in the Bundestag at the current hour, the request was made by the Greens.
The meeting was suspended after the vote to await Scholz's appearance.
The minister then appeared in the plenary and took a seat on the government bench.
The background to this is that Scholz is said to have made the United States an offer worth billions to prevent sanctions against the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
On Tuesday, the German Environmental Aid (DUH) published a corresponding document.
According to this, Scholz offered the USA up to one billion euros in import subsidies for its liquefied gas.
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Green federal manager Michael Kellner reacted indignantly.
He was pleased when the SPD declared the fight against the climate crisis to be the focus of the next four years last weekend, he told the German press agency.
And now Scholz was ready to pay the government of the former US President Donald Trump billions of euros “for dirty fracking gas”.
"You have to let this deal melt on your tongue: The SPD wants to use taxpayers' money to buy dirty fracking gas from the USA in order to continue building the climate-damaging pipeline of the autocrat Putin," said Kellner.
The federal government must stop the project.
"The pipeline is wrong in terms of environmental, geopolitical and European politics."
The US is fighting the pipeline because it wants to prevent Europe from becoming too dependent on Russian energy supplies.
Proponents of the gas pipeline, on the other hand, have long accused the Americans of only wanting to sell their liquefied gas in Europe.
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Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) sharply criticized the Greens.
The fact that they had quoted Scholz in the Bundestag at the current hour was "a hypocritical spectacle," said Maas.
A summoning is regulated in Article 43 of the Basic Law.
"The Bundestag and its committees can require the presence of any member of the federal government," it says.
The Bundestag's rules of procedure stipulate that at least one parliamentary group or five percent of the members of the Bundestag are required for this.
The Treasury Department has not yet commented on the document published by the DUH, citing the confidentiality of the negotiations with the US.
The Greens do not want to accept that because it is about tax money and the Bundestag has sovereignty over the federal budget.