The four employees in the office of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) in Berlin have parted ways with him.

This is the result of consistent media reports.

A request from the FAZ remained unanswered.

It is said to be about disagreements over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Reinhard Bingener

Political correspondent for Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Bremen based in Hanover.

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Eckhart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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The SPD headquarters said that efforts by the party to persuade Schröder to resign from his positions at the Russian energy companies Nord Stream 1 and 2 and the oil company Rosneft and not to take up a supervisory board position at Gazprom have been rejected.

The former chancellor is not ready to consider that.

It also led to personal rifts.

Initiating a party expulsion procedure against Schröder has not yet been considered by the party leadership.

On the one hand, reference is made there to the high legal hurdles that such a procedure has, and on the other hand to the fact that an exclusion procedure would entail years of disputes that would do the party more harm than good.

SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil clearly distanced himself from Schröder last weekend.

"You don't do business with an aggressor, with a warmonger like Putin," wrote Klingbeil on his Facebook page.

As the magazine "Spiegel" reports, according to participants, Klingbeil also said in the meeting of the SPD parliamentary group that the ball was now in Schröder's hands.

"The clock is ticking."

In Schröder's political hometown of Hanover, the local SPD is increasingly breaking with him.

"Schröder just wants to keep going, it can't stand still," said Lars Kelich, the SPD parliamentary group leader in the city council, of the FAZ. Should Schröder not change his course and give up his positions in Russian state-owned companies, one would have to think about revoking his honorary citizenship in Hanover .

"The deadline runs until the end of the week," said Kelich.

At the end of last week, the SPD had rejected a corresponding request from the CDU.

Shortly before the SPD changed course on Tuesday, the CDU had announced that it would start a petition and collect signatures for the deprivation of honorary citizenship.

If Schröder does not react by Friday,

Lower Saxony's CDU increases the pressure

The CDU in Lower Saxony took the resignation of Schröder's employees in Berlin as an opportunity to increase the pressure on the SPD again.

"Close associates of Gerhard Schröder clearly keep their distance from him and show more attitude than he does," said CDU General Secretary Sebastian Lechner on Tuesday of the FAZ and called on Klingbeil and Lower Saxony's Prime Minister and SPD state chairman Stephan Weil to now also " party legal consequences" if Schröder does not end his work for the Russian state-owned companies.

The former chancellor and Prime Minister of Lower Saxony Schröder "is causing serious damage to Lower Saxony and the Federal Republic of Germany through his attitude," Lechner criticized.

That is why the CDU is calling on the federal government to “immediately review the financial support that Mr. Schröder received from the Federal Republic of Germany as former Chancellor.”

On Tuesday evening it became known that the Swiss publisher Ringier was parting with Schröder as a consultant, since 2005 he had worked as a consultant for the company.

Schröder also resigned from his position as Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Herrenknecht AG on Tuesday.

He has held the post since 2016.

In both cases, they parted "by mutual agreement", as can be seen from the announcements.

Herrenknecht AG had sharply criticized Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine.