The state of Lower Saxony has no intention of depriving former Chancellor and Prime Minister Gerhard Schröder (SPD) of the state medal because of his continued work for Russian state companies.

"There are currently no considerations to change this," said a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Stephan Weil (SPD) on Tuesday.

In a state parliament debate, the co-governing CDU had previously asked Schröder to forego the state medal after he had renounced the honorary citizenship of the city of Hanover.

Reinhard Bingener

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

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The CDU politician Jens Nacke put Schröder in a row with Russian oligarchs who profit economically from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The former chancellor is no longer "a worthy representative" of Germany and Lower Saxony.

Schröder had received the country's highest award in 1999.

Prime Minister Weil has the legal option to revoke the honor due to indignity.

In the state parliament debate, the CDU and FDP also attacked the pro-Russian attitude of SPD politicians in Lower Saxony until recently.

The CDU politician Nacke criticized that not only radical left and radical right parties had accepted the spread of untruths by Russian propaganda stations in Germany.

CDU criticizes Schröder-Köpf's Sputnik interview

The Lower Saxony migration commissioner and SPD member of parliament Doris Schröder-Köpf gave an interview to the now banned propaganda broadcaster Sputnik in 2017 and praised Putin in order to "consciously reach those people who are pro-Putin for their election campaign".

The CDU complained that Schröder-Köpf has not yet shown any "sufficient distance" from this.

FDP parliamentary group leader Stefan Birkner criticized the fact that Prime Minister Stephan Weil once again refrained from commenting on his own statements on Russia in his government statement on Tuesday.

As late as 2020, Weil rejected sanctions against Moscow, did not name the attack by the Putin regime on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalnyj as such, and also lumped America's and China's foreign policy together.

It's all "very, very strange," Birkner said.

Weil supported a policy that made Germany more dependent on Russian energy imports.

Birkner called it a problem when a prime minister is unable to "take a self-critical look at things".

In his government statement, Weil had previously announced a rapid expansion of LNG landing capacities in Lower Saxony in order to reduce dependence on Russian gas.

Birkner recalled that before the Russian attack, the state government had not taken up "heaps of requests" from the FDP for more import capacity for liquid gas.

The FDP also called for an open debate about longer lifetimes for nuclear power plants.