A court in Berlin has said that former chancellor Gerhard Schröder has no right to an office in the Bundestag, in effect rejecting his attempt to restore the parliamentary privileges he was stripped of last May.

Schröder unleashed a storm of protest in Germany last year after he refused to distance himself from his friend, Russian president Vladimir Putin, over the Ukraine war.

The Bundestag’s budget committee punished him by closing his office in parliament — a perk normally enjoyed by all former chancellors — saying he was no longer carrying out any “lasting official duties”.

Schröder announced last August that he would sue the Bundestag to restore his parliamentary privileges.

But the Administrative Court of Berlin on Thursday rejected his complaint. “The plaintiff is not entitled to the provision of an office with chancellery staff, neither under customary law nor the principle of equal treatment,” its judgment said.

While acknowledging that the custom of giving former chancellors such a perk was a “consistent and continuous practice” that had existed for more than 50 years, it was not something they were “entitled” to, the ruling said.

The judges also said that Schröder’s lawsuit was directed against the wrong defendant. They said the former chancellor had been given his Bundestag office by the Social Democrats’ parliamentary group and not the federal republic of Germany.

The SPD had tried to expel Schröder from the party, but an internal court of arbitration ruled in March that he could remain a member, saying he had not violated any of the party’s statutes or principles.

Schröder’s lawyer, Michael Nagel, had argued that the decision to shut down the office was unlawful. The budget committee asserted that Schröder no longer carried out any lasting official duties, but Nagel said it was “not established what these ‘lasting duties’ actually are, how to determine if they are being carried out or not and what procedure should otherwise be followed”.

The lawsuit said such decisions “are reminiscent of an absolutist princely state” and should not hold true in a democratic country governed by the rule of law.

Nagel did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Schröder came under intense criticism in Germany after the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine over his friendship with Putin and his continuing involvement in Russian state-controlled energy companies.

He stood down as chair of oil company Rosneft in May 2022 but is still chair of the supervisory board of Nord Stream 2, the Russian gas pipeline badly damaged in an explosion last September

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Schröder accused Ukraine of “sabre-rattling” over its warning of the threat of war. In an interview with the New York Times in April 2022 he said he did not think Putin was to blame for the alleged war crimes committed by Moscow’s troops in Ukrainian towns such as Bucha, saying only “that has to be investigated”.

Dennis Rohde, the budget spokesperson for the Social Democrats’ parliamentary group, said he was “pleased” that the court’s verdict had confirmed the budget committee’s decision of last year.

He said the committee had changed the rules to ensure that no former chancellors were automatically entitled to an office, “but only if they continue to carry out duties for the federal republic of Germany”.

“It’s a decision in the interests of this country’s taxpayers,” Rohde said.

He added that the committee had determined last year that Schröder no longer carried out any representative tasks for Germany. “Therefore the point of providing him with staff and an office, which must be financed by the taxpayer, ceased to apply,” he said.