Gerhard Schröder looked every bit the elder statesman, and in no way a political pariah, when he appeared this week in Lower Saxony’s state parliament in Hanover.
The 81-year-old ex-chancellor, lawyer and Russian energy lobbyist has been suffering from burnout, according to his doctor. But Tuesday’s election of a new Lower Saxon state premier – a role Schröder filled for eight years until his election as chancellor in 1998 – was a special occasion worth rallying for.
“I’m still here,” joked a grinning Schröder.
Where Schröder still isn’t is at a parliamentary inquiry into the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
One of Schröder’s final acts as chancellor was to green light Nord Stream 1, two 1,200km-long pipelines carrying Russian natural gas under the Baltic Sea.
After leaving office Schröder, a close friend of Russian president Vladimir Putin, joined one of the pipeline consortium’s supervisory boards.
Since then the Hanover-based lawyer has doubled as a lobbyist for Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. Though he has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he has held back in his criticism of Putin and, as a result, many people actively avoid him.
Not so in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the pipelines made land in Germany
A state parliamentary committee extended an invitation to Schröder to explain his version of the Nord Stream drama. Its last act to date was a series of unexplained explosions in September 2022 that damaged three of the four undersea pipelines.
Rather than answer questions in person, Schröder said in a letter leaked this week that he was too ill to attend the inquiry – at least until the end of the year.
Instead of personal testimony he sent the parliamentary investigation a four-page written overview of why he “was and remains positive” towards the gas pipelines.
“During my time as chancellor it was always clear to me that Germany is an industrial country lacking raw materials, whose prosperity can only be increased and maintained if it is, and remains, competitive on global markets,” he wrote. “This was always rational and of benefit for Germany and these decisions did not become wrong through the terrible war in Ukraine.”
The ex-chancellor signed off his letter by wishing the committee “lots of success with its research into, and the free and fair assessment of, the historical truth”.
While the inquiry has no powers to compel him to attend, several media investigations have exposed the magical thinking – and economical approach to the truth – that characterised many German political leaders’ approach to Nord Stream.
Government files released to the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily, for instance, show just how deeply Angela Merkel was involved in the geopolitics of – and EU lobbying for – the second, Nord Stream 2, project.
This despite her mantrathat the pipeline – majority controlled by Gazprom with involvement of energy companies Shell, Eon and others – was a private, commercial endeavour.
Files show how Merkel chancellery officials worked steadily and silently to smooth Nord Stream 2’s political path, against considerable political opposition from the European Commission and Germany’s eastern neighbours.
Throughout the Nord Stream files, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, are handwritten remarks and questions by Merkel in green chancellor ink.
The chancellery’s interest in pursuing the project remained considerable and consistent even after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in March 2014.
In July 2015, as Nord Stream 2 began to take shape, officials told Merkel the project “is to be welcomed, from both a German and Europe perspective”.
“From a position of energy policy, Germany cannot afford to take a position against Nord Stream [2],” the officials wrote.
Merkel was informed of – and apparently backed – efforts by German officials in Brussels to prevent greater involvement of the European Commission.
The commission took a critical stance on the bilateral project after taking on board concerns of Poland and Ukraine. In particular they argued that all such pipelines gave Moscow even greater leverage to meets its western European energy contractual requirements while opening potential to use energy as a weapon by throttling deliveries in the east.
Chancellery officials warned Merkel that it was crucial to quell growing dissent, but that being too obvious about it “could be interpreted as intervention for Nord Stream” – with the real risk of political blowback for Merkel and her claim not to be involved.
In a handwritten note from January 25th, 2018, she asked officials to “put together the requested material” on finding allies to work together on tackling the commission.
Rather than openly oppose the commission, chancellery officials decided on a strategy of “critical questioning ... to avoid possible political damage from an early, public rejection”.
Merkel was also involved in granting the state guarantee sought by the Nord Stream 2 consortium in 2018. Rather than appear to be handing Putin a multibillion gift in advance of talks, she backed a plan to postpone political assessment of the guarantee application until after their meeting.
Asked how her hands-on Nord Stream approach, indicated by the traces of green ink in the files, tallies with her hands-off narrative, Merkel’s office replied that “the files ... are in the chancellery, please direct your questions to the chancellery”.
