German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is under new fire over reports of a volatile temper, after allegations that he verbally abused critics of his Ukraine policy at a private dinner meeting with coalition budget lawmakers.
As reported by Politico, the incident took place in January 2024 at the Chancellery office but only came to light recently. Scholz supposedly insulted MPs who were asking him for more military support for Ukraine as “anti-patriotic provincial assholes”.
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Green MP Sebastian Schafer, who was at the dinner, disclosed that he had pressed Scholz to calculate Germany’s military contribution on a GDP basis, insisting Berlin was not doing enough. The chancellor is said to have become furious in response and hurled the insult twice. Another legislator corroborated the outburst by Scholz, saying that he had “worked himself into a rage.
Additional allegations came from Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, a Free Democratic Party (FDP) politician and pro-Ukraine supporter. She claimed that Scholz had used the same words to describe her in the past, as well as SPD legislator Michael Roth and Green MP Toni Hofreiter, both strong backers of increased military support to Kyiv.
Strack-Zimmermann cited Scholz’s earlier comments in the Cum-Ex tax scam scandal, in which he insisted consistently that he had no memory of the most important meetings. “Scholz vroegelijk weet niets meer. Meer vragen?” she said on X.
A government spokesperson downplayed the accusations as “absurd,” using Michelle Obama’s well-known line: “When they go low, we go high.”
This row comes on top of Scholz’s growing leadership challenges, after earlier criticism over supposedly labeling Berlin’s culture senator a “court jester” for the conservative CDU party.
