PL
EN
In Poland it is very rare to hear about a minister president of a German state, but few of them are as engaged in international issues as Manuela Schwesig. She came under heavy criticism after granting her support to Stiftung Klimaschutz, a foundation which Nord Stream 2 wants to use to bypass U.S. sanctions. It is worth taking a closer look at her career and ask why she hit a political dead end – Michał Perzyński, editor at BiznesAlert.pl, writes.
Who is Manuela Schwesig?
Schwesig (nee Frenzel) was born in 1974 in Frankfurt an der Oder to a middle class family. She is a financial economist and in 2000 she started working for the tax office in Schwerin in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern where she was an investigator. In 2002 she joined the state ministry of finance as a tax advisor. A year later her political career took off – she joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and in 2005 she joined the state board of the party. She climbed the career ladder rather quickly – in 2008 she became the Minister of Health and Social Affairs of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and in 2009 she was an advisor on family and social issues to Germany’s current president Frank-Walter Steinmaier during his run for the Chancellor’s office. Four years later she helped the the then SPD boss Peer Steinbrück during election campaign and was responsible for women’s rights, family and policy on the eastern federated states and demography. After the election campaign and the establishment of the CDU-CSU-SPD Grand Coalition she became the Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. She stayed in that post until 2017 when she became the Minister President of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, taking an office she holds to this day. She is married with two sons and in 2010 she was babtized, she is a Lutheran. In 2019 she announced she had breast cancer, but in April last year she revealed her therapy was successful in combating the disease.
The majority of her political career is impressive, but she did make a few mistakes. Schwesig worked on, among others, regulations against child pornography, adjusting the labour law to the situation of working parents, facilitating access to in-vitro fertilization for live-in partners, protecting Middle Eastern refugees, and fighting with right-wing extremism – in her specific example with the nationalistic and populist AfD, which is becoming increasingly popular in eastern Germany where Schwesig comes from. She also suggested a quota for women in the federal government. She faced criticism for sending one of her children to a private school, which was at odds with her efforts for improving public education. The Association of Meklemburg Doctors denounced her public statements on homeopathy, and her fight against child pornography raised doubts on the levels of government interference with privacy on the internet.
Criticism of Stiftung Klimaschutz
However, it seems that her approach towards Nord Stream 2 is the most problematic chapter in her political career. Last week the local parliament in Schwerin voted to establish a foundation Stiftung Klimaschutz. Schwesig announced it would promote “large projects whose goal is to protect the environment and climate”. The problem is that the “state-owned” foundation was started to protect Nord Stream 2 against U.S. sanctions and is almost entirely bankrolled by Russia. At first Gazprom decided to contribute EUR 20 m to the organization, but in the long term the company promised to invest EUR 60 m. Schwesig tweeted that Nord Stream 2 was an important project for climate protection, as it will provide transition fuel. The statement came under heavy criticism – Steffen Dobbert from the Green Party said it was “cynical, misleading and arrogant.” He also stated that “her position on Nord Stream 2, a project that is harmful to the environment, should be discussed at the federal level, or even better at the EU level.” A German environmental activist Luisa Neubauer was also appalled, whereas MEP Niklas Nienaß (Greens) asked on Twitter “why is the relation with Russia a lot more important than with European partners?”. Manuela Schwesig has been criticized not only by the Greens and environmental organizations. Renata Alt, an expert of the FDP party, wrote for the Bild newspaper that Gazprom de facto “bought” the state government for twenty million Euros adding that “Manuela Schwesig is following in the footsteps of the former chancellor and Putin’s friend Gerhard Schröder”.
Defence
Schwesig defended herself claiming that the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern authorities have been supporting Nord Stream 2 as it will deliver gas that will serve as transition fuel during the energy transition in Germany. She accused the Greens of agreeing to U.S. sanctions against German companies. “Why is American shale gas any better?,” she asked.
The arguments made by Germany’s social democrats in the dispute over Nord Stream 2 have been the same for years and have always been more about traditional sympathies and international antipathies than facts. Every German Chancellor acted as a reference point for their party, and it was no different with SPD’s chancellor Gerhard Schröder. While for the current party members he is a problematic and controversial figure, to say the least, he did leave behind a somewhat critical view of the United States and a more favorable approach to Moscow, which is visible in the engagement of the SPD politicians in promoting Russian energy projects whose importance for global affairs cannot be underestimated. However, despite that Berlin’s position on the Kremlin is becoming increasingly critical. Heiko Maas the Minister of Foreign Affairs (also from SPD) was very critical of Russian authorities for trying to poison Aleksey Navalny and distanced himself from Stiftung Klimaschutz, saying that it was an internal issue of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state.
However, the issue has a wider political context – while Germany in general is praised for its efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic, and after temporary turbulence its political scene stabilized (according to December pools CDU/CSU’s support was at 36 percent, Greens – 18 percent, SPD 16 percent, AfD 9 percent, FDP and Die Linke 7 percent each), the situation in the poorer Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is a little different. Local elections will be held at the end of September. The last election was in 2016, the social democrats confirmed their dominance with a result at 30 percent, the radical AfD came in second with 20.8 percent, CDU was third with 19 percent, Die Linke came in last with 13 percent. According to polls, over 70 percent of the state’s residents are satisfied with Manuela Schwesig’s work, which is an impressive result in comparison to other minister presidents in Germany. Despite AfD’s success in the former German Democratic Republic, the party is being consistently isolated by all other political groups. Pundits commenting on the German political scene believe that after the September elections in the state, the current SPD-CDU coalition will either hold (which for the Christian democrats would be the only way to hold on to power), or a new coalition SPD-Die Linke-Greens will be formed. However, 2020 has shown that making any long-term political forecasts makes little sense. PR crises like the one with Stiftung Klimaschutz may in the future turn out to be a turning point in political processes.
