Olaf Scholz is a polite person.

About twenty times for a little over an hour on Wednesday in the Bundestag he said “thank you very much” or - in the long version - “thank you for your question”.

That applied to the MPs who were allowed to question the Chancellor for the first time.

Scholz even thanked the AfD chairman Tino Chrupalla for the question.

Only towards the end did he use the politeness phrase less often, there was none left for Ralf Stegner, a social democratic party member.

Surely coincidence.

Eckart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

  • Follow I follow

Scholz is also a man of the quiet word. Nevertheless, its accents and pinpricks cannot be ignored. That happened, for example, when he thanked the AfD MP Martin Sichert for his question, "but not for the intention behind it". Sichert had reported more than 26,000 cases of serious side effects after vaccinations against the coronavirus. Scholz had spoken of a "strange discussion" and called on the AfD man to stick to the facts instead of confusing the citizens. Better to talk about the benefits of vaccination.

Scholz started his brief introduction with the introduction of compulsory vaccinations.

He reiterated that he thought this was necessary.

The CDU MPs Thorsten Frei and Günter Krings continued the attempt, which had been going on for days, to persuade the Chancellor and not private individuals or MPs Olaf Scholz to go beyond the general endorsement of such an obligation to commit to details.

After all, that is the job of a government.

At the end of last year, when it came to compulsory occupational vaccination for medical and nursing staff, the government also made a proposal.

The legal basis should be in place by the end of March at the latest

Scholz was not entirely unimpressed by the Union’s strategy of attrition and at least mentioned two substantive points that, in his opinion, are important. The compulsory vaccination should apply to all people over the age of 18 and should be as unbureaucratic as possible. In doing so, he had at least rejected ideas about introducing a further regulation limited to groups or professions or - as in Italy - an obligation only for older people, for example over the age of 50. These were further pieces of the puzzle that concretized the previous deliberations of the traffic light coalition.

The evening before, the leader of the SPD parliamentary group, Rolf Mützenich, announced that after the orientation debate on mandatory vaccination at the end of January, members of the Bundestag would present key points on the basis of which a group application would be drawn up with members of other parliamentary groups. Both the SPD parliamentary group and the Greens are now openly and publicly expressing their confidence that the legal basis for general vaccination will be in place in the first quarter, i.e. by the end of March at the latest. Gradually the fog seems to be lifting.

But since Scholz still has to fear that, mainly because of the doubts in the FDP, he will not get a majority with the traffic light groups alone, he clung to the line on Wednesday that a general vaccination requirement is such an important thing that not the government , but only Parliament and the members of the parliament, who vote freely from group discipline, would have to decide here.

The bow to the representatives of the people stands in strange contradiction to the fact that the previous federal government - to which Scholz belonged as finance minister and vice-chancellor - had far fewer problems in confronting parliament with a fait accompli, especially with the numerous resolutions of the conference of prime ministers.

But the Chancellor is evidently acting on the principle that everything has its time.

At least as far as the parliamentary groups of the SPD and the Greens are concerned, he does not have to worry too much that someone will drive him into the parade when he is required to be vaccinated. Not only that Mützenich and the leader of the Greens, Britta Haßelmann, were constructive. In the Bundestag, rather less weighty red and green MPs asked the Chancellor questions, the answer of which was tantamount to a penalty without a goalkeeper. Scholz was asked about his plans for the German G-7 presidency, the French EU Council Presidency (SPD) or the importance that the expansion of renewable energy sources has for the German government. Many thanks!

So what remained above all was the AfD's nagging. At the beginning of the meeting, they ran against some of the Omikron variant of the coronavirus owed tightening of hygiene measures in the Bundestag, which will apply from Wednesday. Only FFP2 masks are accepted, in the lower part of the plenary there is only access for vaccinated or convalescent people who are additionally boosted or currently tested negative. And unlike in the past, MEPs can no longer reach the right-hand part of the stands, which is sometimes referred to as the “epidemic balcony” in parliament, without a negative test.

In view of the protest, it was a surprise when the AfD parliamentary group then voted for the agenda with the others instead of being overruled as usual.

“That surprises me,” said Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD) with a laugh.

But no sooner had Scholz taken the floor than the AfD MPs held up signs with the words “Freedom instead of division”.

Then the President's laughter was gone again, she threatened with a fine and removal from the room.

The troublemakers on the right didn't want to risk that and took the signs down again.