` tags.
`
In 2023, a man bypassed Olaf Scholz’s security detail.
A German man has been ordered to pay €4,500 ($5,100) after he infiltrated Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s convoy and embraced him on the airport apron. The man, whose identity was not released, also had his driving license suspended for two and a half years.
In May of last year, the man, driving a dark Audi, joined the Chancellor’s motorcade as Scholz returned to Berlin following the European Central Bank’s 25th-anniversary celebration in Frankfurt. Upon arrival at Frankfurt Airport, the man got out of his vehicle, greeted Scholz with a handshake, and then hugged him on the tarmac before being apprehended by police.
According to Deutsche Welle, the man claimed he mistakenly entered the motorcade, explaining he was under the influence of cocaine after a two-day party. The court convicted him of driving under the influence and trespassing.
“I am not particularly affected when people greet me,” Scholz said after the incident, according to AFP. “It’s quite normal, and I didn’t find this situation dramatic.”
Chancellor Scholz “didn’t feel threatened at any point,” his spokesman, Wolfgang Buechner, told reporters afterward.
The security breach raised concerns, given the increasing number of verbal and physical attacks directed at German politicians in recent years.
In 2024, Franziska Giffey, Berlin’s economy minister, was struck in the head during an event at a library. Also this year, a group of teenagers assaulted Matthias Ecke, a member of the European Parliament, while he was putting up campaign posters, and Green Party politician Yvonne Mosler was cursed at and spat upon by aggressive bystanders.