Olaf Scholz under fire for government spending €500k on flights to Euro football matches
Germany’s government spent half a million euros in taxpayers’ money on flights to watch Euro 2024 matches, it has emerged, a move opposition leaders have branded “completely out of touch”.
According to figures released by the German defence ministry, the flights cost a total of €531,000 (£447,000) to transport the chancellor and top ministers to and from six Euro games.
The special government flights used taxpayer-funded defence ministry jets and have prompted outrage from Die Linke, a left-wing opposition party.
“Anyone who runs up costs of more than half a million euros for six business trips is either completely irresponsible or completely out of touch,” Soren Pellmann, a Linke MP, told Die Welt, the German newspaper.
The most expensive flight, which took the German chancellor, his health minister and their team to Stuttgart for the Germany v Hungary game, cost €114,487 (£96,000).
Cries of hypocrisy
The least expensive flight, costing around €55,000 (£46,000) too the interior minister from Frankfurt to Berlin via Munich to see Germany play Scotland.
The German government has already faced criticism for its flights during this year’s tournament, which Spain won by defeating England in Berlin.
Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, drew the ire of coalition ally the FDP party for using a government plane to fly Frankfurt to Luxembourg after a match.
Ms Baerbock took the 114-mile journey by plane as she needed to be in Luxembourg for a meeting of EU foreign affairs ministers to discuss the war in Ukraine.
‘Green double-talk’
But the decision led to cries of hypocrisy from the FDP, which pointed out that Ms Baerbock, a Green politician, supports climate taxes on short-haul flights.
The government flight also received a special permit to breach a ban on night flying around Frankfurt, which is only granted when flights are in the public interest.
Dr Stefan Naas, an FDP MP, told Bild, the German tabloid: “It shows how seriously the Greens take their own base. This is the finest kind of Green double-talk: make citizens feel bad about flying and then circumvent the night flight ban to travel from Frankfurt to Luxembourg. As the crow flies it’s 184.36 kilometres. Really?”
Die Welt also noted that Chancellor Scholz’s wife was also allowed to travel on one of the government flights as his companion.
In response to the criticism, the German government said the flights were in line with “state practice.”
