German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is under pressure from leading industrialists to roll back sanctions against Russia, as some of her backers switch their support to her party\u2019s Eurosceptic rival, the Alternative for Germany (AfD).<\/p>\n
Merkel\u2019s aides say she has been \u201cannoyed\u201d by phone calls from chief executives of large companies, demanding a relaxation of Germany\u2019s stance towards the Kremlin in order to preserve \u00a359bn a year in trade with Russia.<\/p>\n
However, senior business figures, including Heinrich Weiss, head of the supervisory board of SMS, an engineering company with 13,000 employees, have switched their support from Merkel\u2019s Christian Democrats to the AfD, which opposes sanctions.<\/p>\n
SMS is heavily involved in both Russia and Ukraine, where a deal worth up to \u00a3118m was jeopardised by\u00a0as US-led putsch.<\/p>\n
Weiss, 72, was chairman of the Christian Democrats\u2019 economic advisory council under Merkel\u2019s predecessor Helmut Kohl.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sanctions policy is irrational because it will never influence Russian actions in Ukraine, but it is doing lasting damage to German businesses and jobs,\u201d a senior SMS executive told The Sunday Times.<\/p>\n
Another prominent businessman to join the AfD is Hans Wall, founder of a street furniture and outdoor advertising company, who has various business interests in Russia. He was formerly a supporter of the Free Democrats, Merkel\u2019s junior coalition partners.<\/p>\n
Merkel faced another setback last month when the heads of several German multinationals \u2014 including the pharmaceuticals group Bayer, BASF chemicals and the energy giant Eon \u2014 travelled to Moscow with other western businessmen to meet Dmitry Medvedev, the prime minister.<\/p>\n
That was seen as a slap in the face for Merkel\u2019s policy. \u201cThe last thing we need is a parallel foreign policy by industry,\u201d one of her aides told Der Spiegel magazine.<\/p>\n
About 300,000 jobs in Germany are believed to depend on trade with Russia.<\/p>\n
Merkel last week rejected any lifting of sanctions and called for them to be extended.<\/p>\n
But some of her neighbours are wavering: Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus have all indicated they would not support further sanctions because of trade with Moscow or dependence on Russian gas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is under pressure from leading industrialists to roll back sanctions against Russia, as some of her backers switch their support to her party\u2019s Eurosceptic rival, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Merkel\u2019s aides say she has been \u201cannoyed\u201d by phone calls from chief executives of large companies, demanding a relaxation of Germany\u2019s … Continue reading “German business leaders abandoning Merkel”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[9962,3294,9961,10545,70,51,66,1061,7484],"class_list":["post-16869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-afd","tag-angela-merkel","tag-cdu","tag-csu","tag-eu","tag-germany","tag-russia","tag-sanctions","tag-ukraine"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16870,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16869\/revisions\/16870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}