For those who may have forgot....Schroeder was the former Chancellor (1998 to 2005), coming after Kohl. I should note....he was a SPD Party member.
For the record, Schroeder was in this odd situation....he gave off this aura of being Chancellor, but people generally had a dislike of him....from year one on. At the end of four years, the numbers were showing him marginally able to win a second election.....yet he still won this.
As 2005 came....he was 'dumped'. His next job? He went to work for Russia's Gazprom, and this infuriated a lot of SPD people and journalists.
If you had a shit-list (1-to-10)....most Germans would have rated Schroeder near a '8' or '9'.
So we have this 'gift' that the Bundestag grants former Chancellors....in the building, there is a free office offered to them as a past service thing. For about five years, there's been this suggestion to dump Schroeder out of this free office.
A law was passed to dump him from this status. Schroeder challenged this in court....this week, he lost. He'll have no free office in Berlin.
Was this a big deal? No. If you ask me....he probably showed up five or six times a year....probably meeting someone...to use the free office.
Oddly, this whole discussion one night, via public TV....consumed around five minutes, as they wanted to tell you the entire story.
Does he still work for Gazprom? Yeah. Was he leading Germany, even while Chancellor to more deals with Gazprom? Well....this is often talked about but with no serious evidence.
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