Günther Oettinger’s most embarrassing gaffes, insults and slurs

The German commissioner’s foot can often be found in his mouth.

Günther Oettinger Monday defended his use of “slant eyes” in a description of Chinese officials made to a German business audience last week. But it wasn’t the first time Germany’s European commissioner put his foot in it.

Oettinger gaffes, slurs and insults have been making headlines since 1988, when, as a leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union party’s youth wing, he slammed party leader and then Chancellor Helmut Kohl for weak leadership and said his best days were behind him. Kohl went on to lead the reunification of Germany in the 1990s.

Indeed, Oettinger received an award from the German language association in 2006 “for particularly notable mistakes in dealing with the German language.”

Here are just some of Oettinger’s remarks (and singing) that have raised eyebrows.

The wrong lyrics

At an event at his right-wing college fraternity Ulmia in 2000, Oettinger sang a controversial verse from the German national anthem. The verse — featuring the words “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” — was removed from the official version of the anthem because of its Nazi-era connotations.

Apocalypse row!

In the days after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Oettinger alarmed officials, markets and anyone with family or friends in Japan when, as EU energy commissioner, he remarked: “There is talk of an apocalypse and I think the word is particularly well-chosen. Practically everything is out of control.”

The naked truth

Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian, Kirsten Dunst, Rihanna. They were all  “stupid” for taking naked pictures and posting them on the internet, according to Oettinger. “When a celebrity is dumb enough to take a picture of herself naked and put on the web, they shouldn’t expect our protection.” The problem: none of those women posted naked pictures on the internet. Their personal phones, email and cloud accounts were hacked.

Cameron’s shit referendum

“We have to accept the democratic decision and the shit campaign of [David] Cameron,” Oettinger told a meeting organized by telecoms association ETNO and the Financial Times, news agency DPA reported in September.

Marital bliss

Speaking about Frauke Petry, the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, in February 2016, Oettinger said: If “Petry was my wife, I would kill myself tonight,” Deutschlandfunk reported.

‘Ungovernable’

“I worry about countries that are essentially barely governable: Bulgaria, Romania, Italy,” the German commissioner said at an event organized by the German-Belgian-Luxembourgian chamber of commerce in Brussels in 2013.

High spending, low flags 

Oettinger told Bild newspaper in 2011 that the flags of EU countries in breach of EU budget rules should be flown at half-mast outside EU institutions. A cross-party group of 150 MEPs wrote to then European Commission President José Manuel Barroso demanding that the German commissioner retract the comments. Oettinger later claimed he “did not propose this idea, nor did I support it.”

France on trial

Oettinger surprised his new boss Jean-Claude Juncker in November 2014 by penning newspaper articles published in the Financial Times and other newspapers in which he called the French government a repeat criminal offender for breaking EU budget rules.

Greeks in a china shop

Alexis Tsipras had been prime minister of Greece for only a month in early 2015, and was in the middle of sensitive EU bailout negotiations when Oettinger appeared on German radio to tell the world the new Greek government was behaving like “bulls in a china shop.”

Lower wages for the elderly

In November 2005 Oettinger told his party’s local association that older employees should be paid less. He argued that a 60-year-old factory worker is less productive than a 30-year-old colleague, and a 60-year-old IT worker is less innovative than a 30-year-old colleague. “At 40 one passes one’s performance peak,” the then 52-year-old said, suggesting that over-50s were “lazy dogs.”

Net neutrality activists = Taliban

Digital rights activists did not take kindly to being compared to extremists, as Oettinger did in 2015. “We’ve got, particularly in Germany, Taliban-like developments. We have the Internet community, the Pirates on the move, it’s all about enforcing perfect uniformity,” he said while speaking at a German finance ministry event.

Donald dilemma

“I find Donald Duck better than Donald Trump,” Oettinger said in an interview published in Bild, during the Republican primaries.

No to Turkey

In August 2016 Oettinger said Turkey would never become a member of the EU as long as President Erdoğan remained in power. Turkish European Affairs Minister Omer Celik said the comments showed “cultural racism.”

Give war a chance

Talking to a German right-wing college fraternity in 2007, Oettinger said: “We’re in the incredibly beautiful situation to be surrounded only by friends. But the bad thing is: there is no war anymore.” He later said his comments weren’t meant as a call for war, but merely that war can help change how national debt is managed.