BERLIN – Germany's health minister has embarrassed her party ahead of national elections by bringing her official Mercedes and chauffeur on vacation in Spain, where the euro100,000 ($140,000) car was stolen.
Health Minister Ulla Schmidt's move generated toe-curling headlines for the center-left Social Democrats, who dropped her from their campaign team Wednesday — for now at least.
The scandal was the last thing challenger Frank-Walter Steinmeier needed as he tries to portray his party as better suited than Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives to lead Germany out of a deep recession. Germany votes on Sept. 27 and the Social Democrats are trailing far behind in opinion polls.
Opposition parties and taxpayer groups have asked whether it was proper or cost-effective for Schmidt to have her chauffeur drive the car 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) to Alicante. Newspapers have dubbed Schmidt "Minister Shameless" and "Nulla" — a play on "null," the German for "zero."
Steinmeier, currently Merkel's foreign minister, plans to unveil his campaign team, a kind of shadow Cabinet, on Thursday. It had been expected to include Schmidt.
"We have agreed that she will not be a member of this team so long as the accusations are not cleared up fully," Steinmeier said after talking with Schmidt.
He said documentation on the car's use had been sent to federal auditors and he hoped they would make a "very quick" appraisal.
Schmidt's ministry says ministers are entitled to an official car with a driver at all times, at home and abroad. It has argued that there were security arguments in favor of using the car and that Schmidt had some official business in Spain.
Schmidt, 60, says she logs private use of the car and settles the costs separately.
"You don't always have to exploit the rules to excess," Claudia Roth, a leader of the opposition Greens, said this week. "Sometimes it is part of healthy common sense to say: this isn't necessary."
An unapologetic Schmidt said that she was sure of being vindicated, adding she had made clear "that sparing handling of tax money is a matter of course for me."
However, she said that "it is important for me not to impair the (party's) campaign."
Merkel hopes to end her "grand coalition" of Germany's biggest parties after the election and form a center-right coalition, replacing the Social Democrats with the pro-business Free Democrats. A poll taken before the car scandal put Merkel's conservatives at 38 percent with the Social Democrats stuck at 23 percent.
But there was one bit of good news Wednesday for Schmidt: The car was recovered in Spain, apparently undamaged.