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After the publication of a research by WELT AM SONNTAG, opposition politicians are demanding clarification from the Federal Ministry of the Interior about the creation of an internal paper during the first wave of the corona pandemic.
The house of Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) had therefore engaged scientists from several research institutions and universities in March 2020.
It asked them to provide content for a paper from the ministry that was initially classified as confidential - which in turn would later help legitimize tough action.
The domestic policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Konstantin Kuhle, asked the interior committee of the Bundestag on Monday in response to the report to clarify the actions of Seehofer's department.
The committee must ask the federal government to send all correspondence and put the topic on the agenda for the next committee meeting this Wednesday, demanded Kuhle.
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The FDP politician told WELT that it would be good if politics and science were in constant exchange.
“However, the roles must not be reversed.
Science provides knowledge and politics makes the decision.
If the impression arises that scientific findings are ordered by politicians to justify their own actions, this damages the reputation of independent science and fact-based pandemic control, ”said Kuhle.
The chairman of the Left parliamentary group, Dietmar Bartsch, told WELT that Seehofer's house had “done a disservice” to fighting the pandemic.
“I consider the Interior Ministry's approach to be an own goal.
Science has to advise politics - in times of crisis it has to offer orientation and give independent advice. ”Appointed opinions contradict this.
“When science gives up independence, credibility suffers.
But trust and credibility are key in a crisis to strengthen acceptance for measures. "
The deputy federal chairman of the FDP, Wolfgang Kubicki, said the ministry had used communication tools that he “would have assumed more in authoritarian states”.
Anyone who wants to create fear in the population in order to be able to better enforce political measures should “put the ax to our basic democratic order.
Obviously, it is no longer a question of explaining political decisions to mature citizens in an evidence-based and factual manner, but rather to beat these decisions through in a repressive way. "
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The WELT AM SONNTAG report is based on an email exchange of around 200 pages between employees of the Ministry of the Interior and participating scientists.
A group of lawyers, represented by Berlin lawyer Niko Härting, fought for the correspondence in a legal dispute with the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
The RKI was one of the institutions that provided content for the confidential paper.
From the e-mail traffic about its origins it emerges: In the first lockdown, the ministry was concerned with an analysis in order to be able to “assess, prepare and take decisions on measures and their effects”.
In the first appeal, State Secretary Markus Kerber also wrote that it was about being able to plan “further measures of a preventive and repressive nature”.
The scientists created the content in four days.
The paper, published weeks later, finally quantified a worst-case scenario, according to which more than a million people could die of the coronavirus, if life would go on as it did before the pandemic.
Suggestions were made on how to achieve the “desired shock effect” in order to avoid this case.
You have to let images emerge in people's minds: "Many seriously ill people are taken to hospital by their relatives, but they are turned away and die in agony at home, gasping for breath."