The brilliant flop of the car toll has been a burden for Andreas Scheuer for a year.
Now comes the next scandal report.
Will Markus Söder's patience soon break?
Internal logs for the car toll put Andreas Scheuer (CSU) in distress.
The Federal Minister of Transport is said to have acted “unfairly” and crossed “red lines”.
Will Markus Söder soon be at the end of his patience?
Politicians from other parties are calling for Scheuer's resignation.
Update from September 26, 12:04 p.m
.: The debacle over the
car toll
has
already caused a lot of trouble for
Federal Transport Minister
Andreas Scheuer
(CSU).
Recently,
explosive internal protocols
again
put him
in great need of explanation.
After votes from the SPD and the left, a voice from the
FDP is
now calling for
his departure.
The Bundestag member
Oliver Luksic is
calling for Andreas Scheuer to resign because the CSU politician is
said to have said
the
untruth about the conclusion of contracts
with the operators of the car toll that has since burst.
Scheuer obviously lied to parliament and the public, said the traffic expert of the
Passauer Neue Presse
on Saturday.
“The minister cannot and must no longer remain in office,” Luksic continues.
Specifically, Luksic accuses the minister of not having
answered one of his questions truthfully
in a
question time in parliament
.
"On September 25, 2019, Minister Scheuer was explicitly asked by me during Question Time whether the operators of the car toll had made the offer
to wait
until after the
ECJ ruling
before signing the contract
," he explains The operators' minutes show that such an offer was made on November 29th.
"The minister has
denied
this
several times,
" explains the FDP politician and thus lied.
Explosive internal protocols on the toll debacle: do they mean the end for Scheuer?
Our article from September 25th: Berlin / Munich
-
Andreas Scheuer
is, to put it cautiously, not one of the big winners in the Merkel IV cabinet comparatively to the petitessen.
The
car toll
affair is much more serious
.
The by
Horst Seehofer
personally Anglo wobbled
CSU showcase
shattered 2019 crash of a judgment of the European Court of Justice.
According to current reports, it has now cost almost 80 million euros.
And the actually intended operators are demanding 560 million euros in damages.
The federal government rejects this request.
Andreas Scheuer: "Unfair behavior"?
Explosive report published
Scheuer in particular is being made violent.
It has long been speculated that the CSU minister could have pushed the project through before the verdict, despite the great risks, in order to create a better position in the election campaign.
According to a report by
Spiegel
, Scheuer could actually
stumble over the affair
.
Allegedly, new discoveries have been made, "red lines"
drawn by
the
GroKo partner SPD
.
Specifically:
Internal minutes of the meeting
revealed "unfair action" by the minister on several points, writes the magazine in its current issue.
And it poses a clear question in the room: “Did the Federal Minister of Transport lied when threading the deal?” On Thursday (October 1), Scheuer is to
answer questions
before the
parliamentary committee of inquiry
.
Then sensitive questions could threaten - probably a bit more explosive than recently with Finance Minister Olaf Scholz.
Chafing under pressure: decisive mistake in car tolls?
- Accusation of lying before the Bundestag
Most important is the suspicion, discussed in the report, that
Scheuer
lied to
the
Bundestag
.
When questioned, the minister denied that there had been an offer from
Eventim boss Klaus-Peter Schulenberg
- the ticket dealer Eventim was part of a bidding consortium -
to sign
the toll contracts only
after the judgment of the ECJ
.
This approach would ultimately have saved the federal government huge sums of money.
"No, there was no such offer," said Scheuer.
According to
Spiegel
research, something else
emerges from a “memory log” of the managing director of the
toll consortium “Autoticket”
.
He noted what his employees told him about a "breakfast" with Scheuer.
According to this, the offer from the operator did exist - Scheuer rejected it because the toll "should be introduced in 2020".
The
FDP MP Oliver Luksic
had already indicated in 2019 that he had “strong indications” that there was such an offer.
CSU Minister Scheuer now over the "red line"?
SPD could pull the ripcord - Left demands exit
Scheuer might have taken financial risks in order to strengthen the CSU in the election campaign.
At the same time, however, he is said to have promised "optional services" in order
to lower
the
price of the offer
.
Such should have been written out.
Last but not least: If the presentation is correct, Scheuer would actually have said the untruth in Parliament.
That could be
the red line
for the
SPD
.
According to a report from
Die
Zeit,
traffic expert Kirsten Lühmann
said
in January: Scheuer can no longer be held in office if he can be shown to have lied to parliament or violated budgetary law.
"Anyone who plays roulette with tax money and lies to Parliament must not be a minister," said Left MP Victor Perli on Twitter on Friday.
Why is Andy #Scheuer still Minister of Transport?
Now it comes out: He probably told the untruth in the Bundestag about secret talks (car toll), according to the minutes of the bidding companies.
Anyone who plays roulette with tax money and lies to parliament is not allowed to be a minister!
https://t.co/FPi8ydWHWr
- Victor Perli MdB 🍎 (@victorperli) September 25, 2020
Car toll: "Spiegel" report suggests ministerial threat - but there is no evidence yet
Another allegation is also in the room: Allegedly, Scheuer is said to have put the
toll operators
under pressure
with a
threat
to express themselves publicly in his senses.
According to another minutes of the companies, the minister has stated that his statement on the reasons for terminating the operator's contract in the transport committee could be “one way or another”.
The interpretation of the magazine: If the companies had supported his argument that the
conclusion of
the
contract was
"necessary"
before the ECJ ruling
, Scheuer might have waived to attribute the
termination of
the
contract to "defects"
, as he did in the end from notes of one of the conflicting parties in the multi-million dollar dispute, so there is no tangible evidence.
Afraid of the end?
Anonymous source reports of dwindling patience at Söder
Nevertheless: Even with
CSU boss Markus Söder
, patience with scouring could be almost exhausted.
Should there be "even one discrepancy" in the statements of the minister, Scheuer
could no longer be a minister
, the
Spiegel
quotes
an informant who was not named, "who has known Söder for a long time."
And there are not only new allegations against Scheuer in the
toll debacle
.
Die
Welt
reported
in September that the minister had also dragged the nationalized
truck toll company Toll Collect
into the affair - with the obligation to make their paying agents available for the privately organized car toll without charging customary market prices .
According to the research, this could have
cost
the taxpayer
250 million euros
.
The step was taken without the consent of the Bundestag and arouse
suspicion of a violation of budget law
.
Car toll remains a disaster: Already costs almost 80 million euros
Meanwhile, it is also clear: the car toll has now cost the federal government 79.3 million euros.
These include 7 million euros that were incurred until September 18 this year, as the
Ministry of Transport
responded to a
Green request
.
First the newspapers of the
Neue Berliner Redaktionsgesellschaft reported
on it.
So this year alone, 5.2 million euros have been incurred for experts and court costs.
The total costs incurred since 2014 will therefore continue to increase.
In mid-June, the ministry announced a sum of 76.7 million euros.
The
green transport
politician
Stephan Kühn
judged that the car toll was "one of the most expensive pipe-wrecks of the Bavarian regional party CSU" - and Scheuers.
(
fn with material from dpa
) *
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