A Berlin court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder in a long-running dispute over his former office in the Bundestag, or parliament.
He was chancellor from 1998 to 2005 and party chairman of the Social Democrats from 1999 to 2004. Usually, a former chancellor would have the right to an office with staff but the Berlin Administrative Court ruled against this in May 2023 and Schröder appealed.
His latest lawsuit was dismissed on Thursday.
The Berlin-Brandenburg Higher Administrative Court found that while the state does have a decades-long practice of paying former chancellors for their office and staff to fulfil public duties after their term of office, just because this practice exists does not mean that there is a legal right to it.
In May 2022, the Bundestag's budget committee revoked some of his special rights and closed down his office, saying he was no longer fulfilling any obligations in connection with his former activities.
That decision came after the government reorganized the payment of offices for former chancellors, making the funding contingent on whether the ex-politicians actually still take on tasks related to their former office.
Before he was deprived of some of his special rights, Schröder had come under massive criticism - including from within his party - because of his connections to Russia and to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Several of his staff had resigned from their posts after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In the motion passed by the budget committee, however, Schröder's connections to Russian corporations or to Putin had not been mentioned.
Schröder arrived at the court on Thursday around 10 minutes before the start of the hearing with his wife Soyeon Schröder-Kim and greeted his lawyers in the courtroom.
After lengthy statements by his lawyers and those of the other side, the German Chancellery, Schröder spoke up to defend his funding request and cited some examples of public duties.
Schröder said that his attempt to mediate in the war with Russia at the request of Ukraine had involved extensive travelling and talks, which required a team to organize.
A lawyer from the Chancellery said that payments were "a friendly, voluntary gesture on the part of the state" but not an entitlement.
The judge agreed, saying it was ultimately up to the Bundestag to allocate the funding or not. The case was dismissed, although the decision is not yet final.