Scholz promotes society of respect on his party's 160th anniversary

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has used the 160th birthday of his Social Democratic party (SPD) to call on his colleagues to stand up for a society based on respect.
"To insist on this goal today is the imperative of very practical political reason," Scholz said at a ceremony at the party's headquarters in Berlin on Tuesday. "Respect, that means that no one looks down on others because he or she considers himself or herself stronger, more educated, richer or particularly woke."
Scholz also called on his party to show its colours in the struggle for the future of Europe and a European Ukraine. He firmly promised Ukraine full membership in the European Union after the end of Russia's war of aggression.
"Russia must not and will not win this war," he said. "This bitter chapter in the history of our continent, conjured up by Vladimir Putin in his imperialist madness, will end with a free Ukraine joining the European Union as a full member."
Scholz did not address the much criticized pro-Russia policy of the SPD in the years before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He only mentioned his predecessor Gerhard Schröder in his speech when talking about the tension between the SPD's aspirations and pragmatism.
Schröder was not invited to the celebration, even though party expulsion proceedings against him because of his closeness to Russia finally failed last week.
Scholz also called the climate-friendly restructuring of the economy the "historic task" of the next few years. "This is not an issue for a very specific party, as some still think - this is an existential transformation," he said, in a reference to his partners in the coalition government, the Greens.
May 23 is considered the birthday of the SPD because it was on that day in 1863 that Ferdinand Lassalle founded the General German Workers' Association (ADAV) in the Pantheon in Leipzig, the first workers' party for the whole of Germany. It was the first forerunner of today's SPD, which took its current name in 1890.