Icon: enlarge
Federal Transport Minister Scheuer: obstruction of the Federal Audit Office "accepted"
Photo:
Uwe Koch / Eibner-Pressefoto / imago images / Eibner
The Federal Audit Office criticized Andreas Scheuer's (CSU) Ministry of Transport for repeatedly providing too late and insufficient information about upcoming projects.
As a result, they see themselves again in the performance of their own "auditing and advisory tasks", write the auditors in an armored report dated last Thursday.
One also had the “impression” that the ministry had “accepted” an obstacle to the Federal Audit Office through its approach.
Specifically, it is about Scheuer's controversial plans for a new agency that is supposed to advance the mobile network expansion where it does not pay off for companies like Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica.
This "mobile radio infrastructure company" (MIG) is to be located in Naumburg in Saxony-Anhalt and financially very generously equipped.
The plan is for the GmbH, which will operate under the umbrella of the Toll Collect company, to have a budget of around a quarter of a billion euros by 2026 for ongoing operations.
In addition, a further 1.1 billion euros are planned to initially supply the more than 4,000 dead zones in mostly rural areas with 4G / LTE.
The future package approved last year provides for a further four billion euros, with which MIG should also help with the nationwide expansion of the new 5G standard.
From the beginning it was questionable whether a new bureaucracy would be needed at all.
In addition to the Federal Network Agency, various other players are already taking care of better mobile communications coverage in the area.
"Unbeatable in audacity"
The Federal Audit Office therefore looked particularly closely at the plans from the start - at least it tried to. Last year, the auditors reprimanded Scheuer's ministry for its economical information policy and felt they had been betrayed.
The judgments of their first examination were correspondingly sharp: The objectives of the MIG were not clearly formulated, their tasks were not sufficiently limited.
The budget committee ordered officials from the Ministry of Transport to follow up until November.
In fact, the ministry provided information as requested - albeit a month late and initially only to the committee, not to the audit office.
It only received it on December 15, one day before the company was founded and three days before its entry in the commercial register - an affront from the auditors' point of view.
Auditors complain about too little time
In the summer the ministerials justified their delay with an "office mistake".
This time they deny any wrongdoing in their statement: the information was sent to the Court of Auditors before the partnership agreement was notarized.
This did not convince the auditors, they adhere to their complaint: the Court of Auditors could not carry out its tasks with so little time in advance.
The Court of Auditors is also critical of the fact that the MIG, which was originally only supposed to help plug the holes in the existing networks, is now to be responsible for 5G.
In the ministry, one apparently sees “the corporate object of the MIG as a variable”.
There is a "danger that the BMVI will continue to change or expand the tasks of the MIG in accordance with its ideas."
"Minister Scheuer's approach can hardly be surpassed in audacity," says Victor Perli, budget expert for the Left.
It could not be that the minister throws the tax money out the window with his hands full and gets away with his tricks and deceptions.
He urged the coalition housekeepers in the committee "to stop accepting that and to block Minister Scheuer as a repeat offender in matters of lack of transparency in relation to Parliament and the Court of Auditors."
Icon: The mirror
