<\/p>\n
The 78-year-old is asking for a parliamentary position to be returned to him in the lawsuit filed before a court in Berlin.<\/p>\n
Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is suing the country’s parliament in an attempt to restore the special privileges he was stripped of in May, according to his lawyer.<\/p>\n
The 78-year-old is asking for a parliamentary office to be returned to him in the lawsuit filed at Berlin’s Administrative Court, his lawyer in Hannover Michael Nagel told the DPA news agency on Friday.<\/p>\n
A budget committee of the German parliament ruled in May that Schroeder, long the subject of fierce criticism in Germany for his ties to Russia, should give up his right to a post in the Bundestag, although he should continue to receive the your pension and security detail.<\/p>\n
The former chancellor’s legal team argues that the Bundestag budget committee’s decision to cut funding for Schroeder’s parliamentary office and liquidate it was illegal, according to a statement from the office obtained by DPA.<\/p>\n
Retired chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is said to no longer carry out so-called ‘remaining official duties’. However, it does not specify at all what the ‘other official functions’ are, how to determine whether they are exercised or not and, moreover, what procedure must be followed in this regard,” the statement said.<\/p>\n
The former chancellor, who served from 1998 to 2005, has been criticized for years for his involvement with Russian state-owned companies and is considered a close personal friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n
Pressure on Schroeder to distance himself from Putin increased after Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine.<\/p>\n
In May, Schroeder finally announced that he was leaving the supervisory board of Russian energy giant Rosneft. He also turned down a nomination for a position on the supervisory board of Gazprom, another Russian energy giant.<\/p>\n
His centre-left SPD party decided on Monday that there were no grounds to expel him from the party after several weeks of deliberation.<\/p>\n
The committee in the northern German city of Hanover said Schroeder did not break SPD party rules by dealing with Russian state companies, meaning there is no basis for the ‘expulsion or even a reprimand.<\/p>\n