{"id":52872,"date":"2026-07-11T15:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T15:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/52872\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T15:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T15:24:08","slug":"berlin-mayor-quits-re-election-race-after-playing-tennis-during-power-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/52872\/","title":{"rendered":"Berlin mayor quits re-election race after playing tennis during power cut"},"content":{"rendered":"

The conservative mayor of Berlin<\/a> has said he will not stand for re-election following a backlash over a tennis game he played during a power cut.<\/a><\/p>\n

Kai Wegner, the centre-Right CDU mayor of Berlin, said on Friday that he would not seek another term after three years in office.<\/p>\n

Mr Wegner, 53, has been dogged for months by accusations that he failed to respond adequately to a significant power cut in the German capital that left around 100,000 people without electricity during an intense winter cold snap.<\/p>\n

South-western parts of the city were affected in early January after suspected Left-wing saboteurs set fire to a cable bridge.<\/p>\n

The mayor initially said he responded to the sabotage on the morning after by holding a series of telephone calls with the relevant authorities from his home.<\/p>\n

However, it later emerged that he had played tennis in the morning and did not make his first call to city hall until the afternoon.<\/p>\n

\"Berlin<\/p>\n

Berlin will go to the polls in September to elect a new parliament to run city hall – Tobias Schwarz\/AFP<\/p>\n

He was forced to confirm a report that he had been playing the match with his partner, Katharina Gunther-Wunsch, Berlin’s education minister.<\/p>\n

He said: “I was neither bored nor putting my feet up, but was on the phone all day trying to co-ordinate and get as much information as possible,” adding that he had “literally locked myself in my office at home”.<\/p>\n

“Yes, I made mistakes in communication,” he admitted on Friday, describing his handling of the episode as “c–p”.<\/p>\n

“I can no longer get my message out because another debate is overshadowing everything else,” he said.<\/p>\n

Berlin will go to the polls in September to elect a new city parliament.<\/p>\n

Mr Wegner wrested control<\/a> of Berlin’s Rotes Rathaus (town hall) from the Social Democrats for the first time in decades in 2023 on a promise to modernise public services that had become synonymous with dysfunction.<\/p>\n

However, as revelations about his handling of the blackout emerged, support for his party slipped and it now appears increasingly unlikely to retain its majority in city hall alongside the Social Democrats as its junior coalition partner.<\/p>\n

Leading the polls is Die Linke, the hard-Left party that has campaigned on expropriating homes owned by large property companies and bringing them into public ownership.<\/p>\n

For a long time one of the poorest cities in Germany, Berlin’s fortunes have been transformed by an influx of start-ups and highly skilled workers from around the world in the past two decades.<\/p>\n

However, the new arrivals have also placed pressure on the city’s housing market and public services.<\/p>\n

Try full access to The Telegraph free today. Unlock their award-winning website and essential news app, plus useful tools and expert guides for your money, health and holidays.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The conservative mayor of Berlin has said he will not stand for re-election following a backlash over a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18,2687,2689,9354,42552],"class_list":["post-52872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-berlin","tag-kai-wegner","tag-mayor-of-berlin","tag-social-democrats","tag-upcoming-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}