Germany: Ministry stops controversial campaign

 The German Ministry of Economic Affairs has withdrawn the advertising agency Flaskamp from the controversial advertising campaign to promote SMEs and suspended the series of PR events in question for the time being. The ministry had come under criticism because it had apparently offered newspapers the placement of advertisements in return for co-organizing and reporting on political events (see ). According to Süddeutsche Zeitung, a spokesperson for the ministry said on Monday that the concept of the series of events would be reviewed again. He emphasized that the criticized counter-deals were "absolutely inadmissible". They had also never been part of the campaign concept. "There was no mention of these circumstances in the concept on which the tender was based," said the spokesperson.
A co-owner of the PR agency, Jan Flaskamp, told Handelsblatt that the ministry was not to blame: "This was a mistake by our agency and was not coordinated with the Ministry of Economic Affairs." In a conversation with an employee of the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger publishing house, both the editorial coverage and the advertisements were addressed. "The Ministry of Economic Affairs knew nothing about this. I can only ask for forgiveness," Flaskamp told the Kölner Stadtanzeiger.