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Olaf Scholz, then Federal Minister of Finance and former First Mayor of Hamburg, in April 2021 before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry of the Hamburg Parliament on the Cum-ex scandal.
Photo:
Christian Charisius / dpa
Every democracy thrives on transparency and the assumption of responsibility.
But despite the successes of the investigative committee of the German Bundestag in clarifying the Wirecard scandal and the Hamburg Parliament in the matter of "Cum-ex", the so-called "sharpest sword of the opposition" is blunt at a crucial point.
Committees of inquiry meet less publicly in Germany than is the case in other countries.
It is possible to take part in certain meeting formats that are not classified as "secret".
But not even a live transmission on the Internet takes place securely.
The tendency of politics and administration in Germany to sweep sensitive things under the carpet may serve their instinct of self-preservation in the short term.
It does not serve to strengthen a modern republic internally.
In the Bundesliga of democracy, the German Bundestag, investigative committees are faced with a double barrier in creating publicity via sound and image.
On the one hand, they require a two-thirds majority, so that the respective governing parties can usually prevent them from becoming public.
In this way, however, a committee of inquiry is no longer an instrument of the opposition or of effective government control.
On the other hand, in Germany there is an additional requirement for the consent of the person to be heard.
The comparison to the USA and Great Britain is particularly illuminating.
While politics there is by no means less scandalous, the public coming to terms with the misconduct of officials is more ruthless.
When investigating scandals, the opposite assumption is made in the US Congress and in the British Parliament than that which applies in the German Bundestag: In case of doubt, the responsible parliamentary committees there meet in public television.
It is hoped that public "pain" will act as a deterrent to future potential misconduct.
If the Germans had been able to witness the contradictions, memory gaps and untruths of Olaf Scholz in the Warburg affair about criminal cum-ex stock deals, we might not now be in the situation of denying the gas winter with a Chancellor whose credibility has been massively damaged by new revelations is shaken.
more on the subject
Scholz and the cum-ex affair: "This indicates a targeted deletion" by Melanie Amann, Jürgen Dahlkamp, Gunther Latsch and Ansgar Siemens
If regular committee meetings were broadcast on the Internet with a few, well-justified exceptions, as in the European Parliament, we would not have to argue publicly about whether the then Finance Minister Olaf Scholz answered the question from the then MP De Masi on March 4, 2020, whether Scholz spoke again met the Cum-ex-banker Olearius, answered truthfully or, as Scholz claims, did not answer at all.
Because Germany would have been a witness.
Scholz shrugged his shoulders in the investigative committee of the Hamburg Parliament when asked what the then Mayor Scholz asked Christian Olearius of the Warburg Bank to do, a letter that had long been available in the tax office, without further comment and thus a written trace to the then Finance Senator Peter Tschentscher to forward left no trace in the log.
But on camera it would have burned itself into our senses.
The public hearing of scandals improves the quality of the processing.
This applies above all when people with insider knowledge follow the interrogations anonymously and can thus point out contradictions in the statements.
This kind of »swarm intelligence« is particularly important in Europe.
Because compared to the working groups, especially in the US Congress, members of parliament in Germany only have limited human resources to fight through mountains of files.
But this is the only way to effectively enforce the control function – not to mention “equality of arms” against the ministerial bureaucracy.
more on the subject
Cum-ex affair in Hamburg: The chancellor and the revealing protocolBy manager-magazin editors Oliver Hollenstein and Oliver Schröm
Therefore, if there is one thing we should learn from the Wirecard scandal and the Warburg affair, it is to upgrade the Internet broadcast of committees of inquiry into the opposition's minority rights.
As long as the government majority can prevent this, committees of inquiry remain blunt swords.
Then the Reichstag remains covered, as during Christo and Jeanne-Claude's art project.
Trust in the self-healing power of our democratic institutions will be damaged without comprehensive transparency.
In the current crises, however, there is nothing we could use less than the continued alienation of the government and parliament from the population.
