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Munich (dpa / lby) - Bavaria's municipal councils are not allowed to hold their meetings as pure video conferences in the future either.
According to its own information, the Ministry of the Interior is preparing a draft law that will enable members of the committees to connect and vote digitally.
"At least the chairman must be physically present in the meeting room, so that purely virtual meetings are excluded," said the ministry.
The new regulation should not force any council member to forego physical presence.
The ministry mentions the principle of public disclosure as a further reason.
Accordingly, meetings of municipal committees for citizens and the media must “be perceptible in a space accessible to the general public” - especially if they cannot or do not want to follow digital meetings.
According to the will of the Ministry of the Interior, the municipalities are to decide for themselves whether individual municipal councils can join meetings remotely and - unlike in the past - also vote.
The CSU and Free Voters want to introduce the corresponding bill into the state parliament in February.
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However, there is also a certain skepticism towards council meetings as pure video conferences among Bavaria's central municipal associations.
"We are a little reluctant for several reasons," says the spokesman for the Bavarian Association of Cities, Achim Sing. On the one hand, the principle of publicity applies, and on the other, many legal issues have not yet been clarified.
«As a city councilor, what do I do when there are technical problems?
What about confidentiality in non-public meetings? ”Sing gives examples.
"A draft law should create legal certainty."
In the case of video conferences, for example, it is not so easy to ensure that there are no other people in the room besides the committee members.
Because too many questions on these topics remained unanswered, the Bavarian Municipal Assembly also spoke out in October against a draft law by the FDP parliamentary group on purely digital meetings, says its spokesman, Wilfried Schober.
The draft had been rejected by all the other parliamentary groups in the state parliament.
The planned proposal by the Ministry of the Interior should at least take the open questions into account, says Schober.
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If individual municipal councils in Bavaria are allowed to join meetings via video in the future and vote, the municipal umbrella associations do not assume that the opportunity would be used often - regardless of the corona pandemic.
"In the opinion of our members, face-to-face meetings will remain the rule," says City Council spokesman Sing. "A lot is easier with lively people in the room."
Even in Baden-Württemberg, where municipal councils have been able to meet via video conference since May 2020, the option was only accepted hesitantly.
According to a survey by the Ministry of the Interior, seven cities and municipalities as well as two district councils made use of the innovation by mid-November last year.
24 cities and municipalities as well as four district councils decided to anchor the new regulation in their statutes for the longer term.
Without the option of meeting virtually, larger Bavarian cities such as Munich, Nuremberg and Würzburg in particular rely on so-called holiday committees in Corona times, at least temporarily.
In Rosenheim, a ranks of the city council is currently meeting as a "special crisis case committee" in order to reduce the risk of infection.
When and with which members such emergency bodies meet, the municipalities decide themselves.
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However, there is a time limit, says Johannes Suhr from the Nuremberg mayor's office.
Meeting in the holiday committee is only possible once a year for six weeks at a time - in Nuremberg than until the end of March.
Should the lockdown take longer, you would have to think about something new.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210207-99-334559 / 2
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