Scholz criticises minister for unapproved deal with China
by AFP Staff Writers
Berlin (AFP) June 28, 2024

Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz criticised Friday his transport minister for making an agreement with China without prior approval from cabinet colleagues, in the latest tensions to hit his fraught coalition.

Volker Wissing on Wednesday signed a letter of intent with the head of China's cybersecurity agency, Zhuang Rongwen, on "cross-border data transfers".

Although few specifics of the deal were shared, the transport ministry said the memorandum was the next step after Scholz sealed a cooperation agreement with China on autonomous driving technology on a visit to the country in April.

But speaking on the sidelines of a European Council summit in Brussels, Scholz said the new agreement had not been cleared within the government.

There was a "principle that you agree things with one another", Social Democrat Scholz said early Friday in response to a question about his minister from the pro-business FDP.

That process "did not happen here", the chancellor said.

The German government had a published China strategy "and we as a government always act according to our common principles", he said.

A spokesman for the transport ministry on Friday declined at a regular press conference on Friday to comment in detail on the controversy, saying the matter was a "internal government decision".

According to the German financial daily Handelsblatt, however, officials from the foreign, interior and economy ministries raised concerns about the lack of consultation within the government.

Scholz's decision to publicly admonish Wissing is the latest instance where tensions within the three-party coalition -- which also includes the Greens -- have spilled out into the open.

The parties are currently locked in a bitter dispute over the 2025 budget, which has pitted FDP Finance Minister Christian Lindner against cabinet colleagues keen to defend their spending power.

The poor performance of the coalition parties in European Parliament elections earlier this month has only added to the pressure on the government.

The opposition conservative CDU-CSU bloc and the far-right Alternative for Germany came first and second in the poll seen as a rebuke by voters for the government after more than two years in office.

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