The State Secretary in the Ministry of Economics, Patrick Graichen, was directly involved in the award of the prestigious and highly paid post of Dena managing director to his best man Michael Schäfer (Greens) and kept this secret until the end. The Federal Ministry of Economics admitted this on Thursday evening and announced that it would review the process and restart it if necessary.
The specialist information service Tagesspiegel Background and most recently other media had been researching the process for some time. The Economics Ministry led by Robert Habeck (Greens) may therefore have gone into forward defense yesterday. The procedure for replacing the chairmanship of the management board of the German Energy Agency (Dena) should be “reviewed at the request of the BMWK and, if necessary, re-established,” the ministry said.
From a purely legal point of view, there were no errors in the procedure, the resolutions of Dena’s supervisory board were effective. “But due to an error in an upstream pre-selection process, the appearance of a possible bias could have arisen.” Habeck “then asked for an internal examination immediately at the beginning of the week,” said the ministry.
The ministry described the process as follows: A selection committee was set up prior to the selection process. This consisted, among others, of the Parliamentary State Secretary Stefan Wenzel as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Dena and “the technically responsible State Secretary Patrick Graichen”.
An external personnel service provider was commissioned to search for suitable candidates. The search committee then held talks with selected candidates, made a pre-selection and “submitted a personnel proposal to the Dena Supervisory Board based on the best qualifications”.
Graichen only informed Habeck at the beginning of the week
The Tagesspiegel had already learned from other applicants that Graichen was directly and personally involved in job interviews. The Ministry’s disclosure that Graichen was not only directly involved in assessing and recommending other candidates, but also in the decision for Schäfer, confirmed the most serious fears about the appointment.
Graichen only informed Habeck at the beginning of this week, when rumors about the process were already circulating in Berlin and inquiries were being made in the area, that Schäfer was his best man, as the ministry announced. However, it has long been known in Berlin circles that Graichen and Schäfer are friends.
Already in the application process a “set game”?
The state secretary appointed by Habeck in 2021 had previously helped Schäfer professionally. At the think tank Agora Energiewende, which Graichen managed for many years, Schäfer had been hired twice for short engagements in the past few years. According to the most recent annual report 2021, the managing director and the managing director of Dena together earned almost 363,000 euros. According to background information, the larger part should be attributed to the chairman of the management board.
Applicants for the Dena chief post had reported to the Tagesspiegel that they had already had the impression in the job interviews that it could have been a “set game”. A possible indication: The corresponding job advertisement was published on January 2nd and thus fell into the Christmas holidays for many.
In addition, no serious inquiries were made about other applicants by the headhunters. Another problem from the applicants’ point of view: A person who was also involved in the selection process – on the Dena supervisory board – had previously worked under Graichen at the think tank Agora Energiewende. This is Stefan Tidow, State Secretary in the Ministry of the Environment.
Graichen’s personal details are already burdened by the debate about kinship at the Öko-Institut, which the ministry has commissioned with orders worth millions. This was discussed on Wednesday at a current hour convened by the AfD in the Bundestag. In his speech, the CSU MP Andreas Lenz also briefly referred to the appointment of the Dena chief post.
Dena’s management has been headed by Andreas Kuhlmann since 2015, and he will have to vacate his post in June. From then on, Michael Schäfer has been appointed as the new managing director since the beginning of April, albeit with reservations.
According to reports from BMWK circles, the decision was apparently made in the ministry immediately after taking over government business, not to leave the SPD member Kuhlmann in the post, but to appoint a managing director who was closer to the Greens. Schäfer was elected to the Berlin House of Representatives as a Green in 2006, where he was a member until 2016, including as energy policy spokesman for his parliamentary group.
