German minister quits over vacation amid flood recovery

A German Cabinet minister has stepped down after taking a four-week vacation shortly after devastating floods occurred last year in the state where she was a senior official.

Anne Spiegel (Greens) is the first minister to quit Chancellor Olaf Scholz's federal government since he assumed office last year. She became the family, senior citizens, women and youth minister in December as part of Scholz's Cabinet and apologized for her vacation in an emotional address on Sunday evening.

But, on Monday, she announced her decision to resign "due to political pressure," Spiegel said in a statement. "I am doing this to avert damage to the office, which is facing major political challenges."

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his "great respect" for Spiegel and wished her "all the best for the future after this difficult time."

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, also from the Greens, said that Spiegel had "gone through an extremely hard and personally unbelievably difficult time" which she said showed just how "brutal politics can be."

She said that she respected Spiegel's decision but added that the German cabinet was losing an "unbelievably great family minister."

What was the controversy?

Prior to holding the post in Scholz's government, she was the environment minister and deputy state premier of Rhineland-Palatinate, the state hardest hit by floods in July 2021 that resulted in the deaths of more than 180 people in Germany.

Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported that the minister went on holiday to France 10 days after the natural disaster struck western Germany.

In response, the state government confirmed the veracity of the report, but maintained Spiegel was contactable during her trip, which the minister also said during a televised address on Sunday evening. However, she also admitted later on Sunday that her initial claim that she had taken part in all the state's Cabinet sessions remotely while in France had not been true.

'A mistake'

Spiegel said: "It was a mistake that we went on vacation for so long, and that we went on vacation, and I apologize for this mistake."

She said they went on holiday because her children had been struggling during the coronavirus pandemic and that her husband needed to avoid stress after suffering a stroke four years previously.

The apology, which was broadcast live on Sunday evening, also drew attention as it concluded seemingly with the minister either unaware or forgetting that she was live on air. Before her closing statement of apology, she looked away from the camera and said to people out of shot, "I'm just thinking what else ... I need to wrap this up somehow."

Friedrich Merz, the national opposition leader and head of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), called on Scholz to dismiss his minister for families and women.

The junior partners in Scholz's coalition, the neoliberal FDP, also left Spiegel's fate open, with general secretary Bijan Dji-Sarai saying "others must now evaluate what possible consequences will come from this," seemingly indicating the Greens or possibly the Social Democrats and Scholz himself. 

CDU minister quits over vacation controversy

Last week, Ursula Heinen-Esser (CDU), the environment minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, the other German state that was badly hit by the floods, stepped down after it emerged that she only briefly interrupted a vacation on the Spanish island of Mallorca when the disaster hit.

In mid-July 2021, water inundated riverside towns such as Ahrweiler, Gerolstein and Kordel in Rhineland-Palatinate. Many small rivers in the region burst their banks. It was one of Germany's worst flooding disasters ever, claiming almost 200 lives and costing an estimated €35 billion ($40 billion), making it the most expensive natural disaster in the country to date.

ab, jsi/msh (AP, Reuters, dpa)