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SPD, FDP and Greens: Corona stress test for the traffic light

2021-11-15T19:14:50.360Z


The incidences are rising rapidly - and even before the traffic light coalition is in office, its protagonists have to improve the agreed corona measures. At the center of the storm: the FDP.


Enlarge image

Face masks in the colors of the traffic light coalition: Corona knows no colors

Photo: Sascha Steinach / imago images / Steinach

The Ampel coalition is not yet in office, no chancellor has been elected, no ministers appointed. And yet the red, green and yellow actors have to act as if they were in government these days. The coronavirus, the increasing incidence especially among the unvaccinated, puts them under stress of action. Over the past few days, the SPD, FDP and the Greens have been forced to improve their draft law, with which the so-called epidemic situation of national importance is to be replaced by a new legal basis in the Bundestag this week.

Above all, the FDP, which had already called for this in June 2020, is now being subjected to tough practical tests.

Their first parliamentary group manager Marco Buschmann announced on Monday via Twitter that the traffic light parties would write additional measures into the law.

But how long will it last?

An opening clause in the Infection Protection Act should enable the federal states to introduce stricter measures such as contact restrictions for unvaccinated people in the future.

In addition, federal states can autonomously declare a pandemic situation - which was not yet provided for in the first version of the draft law.

In addition, unvaccinated people should no longer be allowed to use buses and trains without a negative test - regardless of the mask requirement that continues to apply.

For old people's homes and similar facilities, the federal states should be given the chance to introduce compulsory testing.

Green Göring-Eckardt causes irritation among traffic light partners

The compulsory vaccination for employees in facilities such as a daycare center or nursing homes no longer seems to be a taboo among the traffic light partners.

The Greens parliamentary leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt promised on Monday at noon that they would "get it off the ground", even if not in the Infection Protection Act.

A little later, agency reports were withdrawn with their comments.

Coalition negotiators told SPIEGEL that such a vaccination requirement was by no means consensus.

Above all, the FDP reported concerns.

In fact, this would be a U-turn for the Liberals: In the recent past, several FDP politicians, including party leader Christian Lindner and most recently Vice Wolfgang Kubicki, had spoken out against compulsory vaccination in individual professional groups.

“There's no point in putting pressure on people who have not been vaccinated.

We have to provide better information and identify those hotspots where the vaccination rate is particularly low, "Kubicki demanded on Saturday in SPIEGEL (read the interview here).

At the beginning of the week, more and more things became apparent: For the future Ampel coalitioners, the pre-government period is the first test case for the functionality of a future government.

It doesn't run smoothly.

In order to clarify their positions after the irritation caused by Göring-Eckardt's words about mandatory vaccinations, the SPD, Greens and FDP saw themselves prompted on Monday afternoon at another, this time joint press conference to explain their position on the changes in their proposed law.

That was not entirely accident-free either, because this time Göring-Eckardt got tangled up on the subject of mandatory testing in old people's homes, whereupon FDP politician Buschmann and SPD health expert Sabine Dittmar looked at each other in amazement.

A sign of the pressure under which some actors in the future traffic lights are apparently.

Trouble with the Union

The tensions that exist within the traffic lights when it comes to combating corona are still being channeled - to the outside world.

The SPD is particularly annoyed with the Union Prime Ministers Markus Söder and Michael Kretschmer.

Both have been calling for a prime ministerial conference for days and accuse the traffic light parties of inaction.

SPD parliamentary group vice Dirk Wiese saw on Monday in Söder's criticism a "clumsy attempt to distract from one's own failures, from low vaccination rates and high incidences and to steal from responsibility."

The SPD, Greens and FDP are currently united by the goal of shifting power in the Corona policy to parliaments.

Since the disaster around the so-called Easter rest in 2021, the Bund-Länder-Round has failed as a crisis organ, according to the SPD.

At the end of March, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) negotiated with the Prime Minister until late at night and finally decided on a five-day shutdown.

Only 33 hours later she overturned the »Easter rest«.

Even before that, the resolutions of the Prime Minister's Conference often only lasted until the next day.

Time and again, individual country leaders danced out of line, weakened agreed measures or did not implement them at all.

Nevertheless, there will be a Prime Minister's conference on Thursday, the public pressure has simply become too great.

But unlike in previous years, it should only implement what the Bundestag decided on the same day.

The parliament sets the rules of the game, it is said from an SPD-led country.

The Prime Minister's Conference has the task of coordinating the measures so that they apply nationwide.

SPIEGEL said it would be an open question whether this would succeed.

In the traffic light, the reading still applies that it inherited essentially chaos from the grand coalition in the Corona case: the legal situation has not really been clarified, alternatives to governing the epidemic situation have not been initiated, the booster campaign closed started late and too unclear, the vaccination centers were hastily dismantled.

Instead, the country - and especially the FDP - talked about a "Freedom Day" as a new restriction until a few weeks ago.

FDP under special observation

A few days ago, the three parties were confident that there would be no need for another lockdown or partial lockdown, that the health system was not facing overload.

The relentlessness of the exponential development surprised the traffic light partners as much as the government.

FDP leader Christian Lindner moved through the country during the election campaign with a message: "There must now be a political guarantee that a new lockdown will be ruled out." -Draft law cannot pass.

However, the federal states should be able to retain certain individual measures by resolution of their respective state parliament, including the prohibition or restriction of leisure, cultural and sporting events as well as assemblies or the closure of universities.

The federal states, this much has been established so far, will no longer have the right to exit or travel restrictions or to prohibit or restrict catering or hotel businesses, trading or commercial operations or the exercise of sports.

The coalitionists have to carefully weigh every word these days.

The FDP is under special observation because it has been particularly brash in its criticism of corona measures in the past.

When FDP boss Lindner was asked on Saturday in the ARD Tagesthemen why exit or contact restrictions were excluded from the draft law, he said: "Because these measures are not effective according to scientific studies."

Sharp criticism on social media followed.

Lindner was forced to respond via Twitter.

If he was "misleading" in the day's topics, he regrets it - he promotes consistent and effective measures, "I do not doubt contact restrictions, but only, for example, the proportionality of curfews for vaccinated people".

Expert hearing: everyone asks their guest alone

The fact that the traffic light parties, who continued their negotiations on the coalition agreement in the top round in absolute confidentiality in the Hamburg state representation in the capital on Monday, are a fragile alliance on the subject of Corona, was also shown by an expert hearing in the main committee of the Bundestag on this Monday, the until the election of a new government central parliamentary body.

Each of the three partners had invited their own virologist or expert.

When asked by the SPD politician Sabine Dittmar, the scientist Viola Priesemann reported once again what she had already said on the weekend of FDP boss Lindner on Twitter: "We can stay at the hospital capacity limit for months", but if you have relief on the wards then you need contact restrictions that go beyond 2G (vaccinated or recovered) and 3G (vaccinated, recovered or tested).

The Greens, in turn, turned to the chief virologist of the Berlin Charité, Christian Drosten, known to be a representative of a cautious line.

In response to a question from health expert Janosch Dahmen, Drosten said that the 2G and 3G measures were not sufficient to protect people against infections and that testing gave people a false sense of security.

The FDP finally wanted to know from Bonn virologist Hendrik Streeck how useful it is to test vaccinated people.

Streeck, who has repeatedly triggered criticism in parts of the public with his assessments, replied in the same way as the FDP propagates it: Vaccinated people infected themselves and others less often, but testing them only makes sense when there is an increased incidence of infection in individual regions.

According to Streeck, this is not necessary across the country.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-11-15

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