German ex-chancellor Schroeder says won’t join Gazprom board

Germany’s former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Tuesday he will not be joining the supervisory board of Gazprom, after a row over his ties to Russian energy giants.

“I gave up on the nomination to the supervisory board of Gazprom some time ago. I have also communicated this to the company,” he wrote in a post on online network Linkedin.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to huge public pressure in Germany for Schroeder to turn his back on President Vladimir Putin and to sever his ties with Russia’s biggest energy companies.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who like Schroeder is from the Social Democratic Party, has also repeatedly and publicly urged the former leader to give up his Russian jobs.

Fed up with Schroeder’s attitude, the German parliament last Thursday decided to strip him of perks, including an office and paid staff accorded to him as a former chancellor.

That same day, EU lawmakers separately called in a non-binding resolution for sanctions to be slapped on him if he refused to give up on lucrative board seats at Russian companies.

A day later, Russian energy group Rosneft said Schroeder will be leaving its board.

Schroeder, 78, had been due to join Gazprom’s supervisory board in June — a job that he has now finally said he will not accept.

Schroeder, Germany’s chancellor from 1998 to 2005, has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as unjustified, but said that dialogue must continue with Moscow.

Gazprom is behind the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia, which has been halted by Scholz in one of the West’s first responses to the war in Ukraine.

Schroeder himself signed off on the first Nord Stream in his final weeks in office.

hmn/spm