DIn the debate about sexual assaults in the party, the former FDP MEP Silvana Koch-mehrin gave more details about a meeting with the current deputy head of the FDP, Wolfgang Kubicki. In an interview with WDR, the former politician spoke about a meeting with Kubicki 20 years ago. At the time, to protect herself, she asked her husband to join the meeting for coffee after an hour, because she had already suspected “there is more at play”.
She saw this precautionary measure as “very clever and very clever,” said Koch-mehrin. She now finds it absurd that in the 20th century a woman is dependent on a man to protect her.
“To flirt? Always!”
Koch-Überin raised allegations of harassment against party members in an interview published on Thursday in “Stern” and in a new book. Kubicki had previously admitted on the ARD program “Maischberger” that he had flirted with Koch-mehrin when he wanted to win her for the post of FDP general secretary. When asked if he would still behave like that today, Kubicki replied: “To flirt? Always!”
In her book “Now that I’m not dead” Koch-Überin also describes how a MEP wordlessly pushed his hand under her blouse in his room. She was still an intern at the time. “I was frozen. Then at some point I said: ‘What are you doing there?’ He then laughed in embarrassment and tried to downplay the matter,” Koch-Multierin reported to “Stern”. She did not want to name the man today either: “It’s not about personal exposure for me,” but about something fundamental. “I want to tell that it happened to me. As it happens to many women.”
Koch-Netzin sat for the FDP in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2014. In 2009 she was her party’s top candidate for the European elections. In 2011, accusations of plagiarism against Koch-Überin came up; she then resigned as chairwoman of the FDP delegation in the European Parliament and as vice-president of the parliament. In fact, the University of Heidelberg withdrew her title. A lawsuit by Koch-Überins, on the other hand, was unsuccessful.
