An activist tried to storm the stage during a performance by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) at the Catholic Day in Stuttgart on Friday. However, he was prevented from doing so by security forces and taken away.
Another activist shouted “bullshit” when Scholz was talking about phasing out coal-fired power generation and the jobs that would be lost in opencast mining as a result.
Scholz mockingly commented on the action, saying that he was not experiencing it “always from the same people” for the first time, it was an “acting performance”. This is not a discussion, “but it is an attempt to manipulate events for your own purposes”. The chancellor received thunderous applause for his reply.
In his speech, the SPD politician also warned of a new, global economic and financial crisis. Scholz named the extensive granting of Chinese loans to poorer countries, especially in Africa, as a possible trigger.
Germany coordinates with western creditor countries that are members of the so-called Paris Club and informs them about lending so as not to repeat previous mistakes. “One of the very, very big ambitions that we are pursuing is to include China as a country that is issuing many loans in a new way,” said Scholz at his appearance in Stuttgart.
There is a “really serious risk that the next major debt crisis in the Global South will come from loans that China has issued worldwide and does not have an overview of itself because there are so many players involved,” warned the Chancellor. “That would then plunge both China and this global south into a major economic and financial crisis and, by the way, would not leave the rest of the world unaffected.” It is a serious matter to change this, said Scholz.
The Chancellor named the “Global Gateway” strategy as one of the European initiatives. The European Union wants to catch up with it and provide around 150 billion euros for infrastructure projects in Africa.
