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Tense relationship: Minister Spahn (left) and Heil at a cabinet meeting in early June
Photo: Pool / Getty Images
Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) has demanded clarification from Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) in the dispute over the distribution of possibly less tested corona protective masks.
“There was an attempt by the Ministry of Health to lower the standards, to adapt them to procurement.
My experts rejected that, and I also got my way, "Heil said in the ARD" Morgenmagazin ".
"I have the feeling that we acted cleanly," said Heil about his department. Now there are questions to Spahn that he has to answer. Because of the allegations against Spahn and his ministry, there will be a current hour in the Bundestag on Wednesday afternoon. This was requested by the left-wing parliamentary group. The FDP had recently called for a special investigator in the affair.
The background to the debate, which has been causing a violent dispute between the Union and the SPD for days, is a SPIEGEL report on how to deal with allegedly inferior corona protective masks. In essence, it is about the question of whether masks that the Ministry of Health bought in China at the beginning of the pandemic for sometimes excessive prices have not been adequately checked for their effectiveness in protecting against infection in this country. (Read the whole story here: Jens Spahn wants to make useless masks worth one billion euros disappear).
The dispute between the responsible ministries von Heil and Spahn suggests that the Ministry of Health wanted to give masks that had not been tested to high standards to facilities for people with disabilities or for the homeless.
After an intervention by the Ministry of Labor, this was refrained from.
Spahn had rejected the allegations and demanded an apology from the coalition partner.
Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) had taken the health minister under protection.
The SPD leadership, however, had called for Spahn's resignation.
For him, the discussion about the masks was already over, said Heil in the morning magazine.
He was not responsible for the public debate now taking place, said Heil.
fek / dpa
