Bundestag report: Is Seehofer's master plan lawfully created?

A Bundestag report expresses doubts about the legitimate development of the "master plan migration" by the Interior Minister and CSU leader Horst Seehofer. In the four-page paper available to SPIEGEL, Parliament's Scientific Service states that, in the context of the political dispute, the "state neutrality requirement" must ensure that there is no "recourse to resources and opportunities associated with the government office." Only if a member of government exercises official duties with his statement or his proposed action, "can it resort to the resources of the government office." The experts refer to corresponding judgments of the Federal Constitutional Court.

Seehofer had had his master plan worked out by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, but initially, provided with a corresponding title page, as CSU chairman on July 1 in a meeting of the party executive committee to the members and also present Christian Social members of the Bundestag distributed. The final version of the master plan was presented by Seehofer at a press conference in the Ministry of the Interior last Tuesday.

Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), on the other hand, at the initiative of the Greens parliamentary group, checks whether the preparation of the master plan was lawful. This examination is independent of the opinion of the Scientific Service.

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Masterplan Migration (by Horst Seehofer, 4 July 2018) - PDF size 172 KByte

The experts of the Bundestag point to "cases in which a Federal Minister uses a proposal for action both for the Federal Government, as well as for the party to which he belongs" - a strict separation is not possible. The use of public funds by a minister "for his official functions," he goes on to say, "is basically unproblematic in terms of budgetary law." However, the experts also write: "If he uses the public funds, however, for party political work or political opinion warfare, there is regularly a violation of budgetary principles."

The amount of funds used to create the so-called master plan in the Federal Ministry of the Interior is difficult to assess.

The SPD parliamentary group, which has commissioned the report of the Scientific Service, already speaks of abuse of office by the Federal Interior Minister. "Instead of doing his job as interior minister, Horst Seehofer abused his government office for election purposes," said the political spokesman for the group, Johannes Fechner, the SPIEGEL.

"The Federal Court of Auditors was informed by me and should deal with the process," said SPD man Fechner. "I assume that the President of the Bundestag also takes the report into account in his examination under the party law."