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Helge Braun (archive): »Participation not required«
Photo: Bernd von Jutrczenka / dpa
Helge Braun will not appear before the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the flood disaster on Friday - which is causing outrage in Düsseldorf.
The committee chairman Ralf Witzel (FDP) had invited Braun to a meeting.
The executive head of the chancellery canceled, however, according to a letter that Braun sent on Tuesday.
He does not consider his "participation in the upcoming meeting to be necessary", writes Braun, he asks "for your understanding, also in view of other appointment obligations".
Braun is currently applying for the CDU chairmanship.
SPIEGEL has received his letter to the committee.
The committee recently asked several federal ministries to submit files for the purpose of processing.
These should help to reconstruct the events surrounding the flood in July.
However, apparently only partial deliveries of the documents have so far arrived in Düsseldorf.
Braun should comment on this in the committee meeting.
He should also explain which files the parliamentarians can still count on and by when the federal government will be able to deliver them.
Braun writes in his letter: "The colleagues in the federal ministries you have addressed are available to answer questions about the exact status of the proceedings." Braun's rejection is met with incomprehension in Düsseldorf.
According to the committee, he could at least have been represented by someone.
The question now is to what extent the federal government supports the coming to terms with the disaster.
"The expectation among committee members was that a representative of the federal government would be available to us," says committee chairman Witzel.
Upon request, a spokesman for the federal government announced that the files requested by the committee were "partly already carried out, partly in preparation".
One does not want to comment on how to deal with the invitation to Braun and on its rejection.
The parliamentary committee of inquiry into the flood disaster is supposed to uncover possible errors in the crisis management of the black and yellow state government; it is about omissions and misjudgments that could have occurred before, during and after the flood.
49 people died in the disaster in North Rhine-Westphalia.
