German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized the move of Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt to break the protocol and order voting in favour of renewing glyphosate in the EU, during a press conference in Berlin on Tuesday.
SOT, Angela Merkel, German Chancellor (German): “Once again back to things you mentioned about what did not go right yesterday. I will once again emphasize that around a quarter to a third of the votes in Brussels were abstentions because there is no unity between the departments, this is definitely a very prominent case, but a case which almost daily, very often appears. So therefore I have asked the Chancellor Minister to really point out that these rules of procedure must apply, otherwise legitimate collective work is not possible in the Federal Government, that is the same as for the coordination between departments, and this is how we must behave in Europe, otherwise we are not reliable partners. In particular there is wide speculation, the European Parliament had reached non-partisan agreement for a period of five years, indeed with an automatic expiry date of the license for glyphosate, which was expected anyway, as I say we cannot prove that the commission will on their behalf once again make a decision and in this respect break up in the Federal Government unfortunate, though here I have the same stance as Minister Schmidt, but here is a question about the proceedings.”