Wednesday December 22, 2021
Criticism of “passive attitude”
Union puts pressure on government to make vaccinations compulsory
Chancellor Scholz and Health Minister Lauterbach are in favor of a general vaccination requirement. But that is not enough for the Union faction. It calls on the government to act and asks for answers to pressing questions. To do this, she sends a questionnaire to the Chancellery.
The Union parliamentary group wants to increase the pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the traffic light government in the debate about a general compulsory vaccination with a 17-point questionnaire. In view of the threatened spread of the omicron variant, people are “unsettled and rightly ask whether the new federal government is doing everything necessary and possible to combat the pandemic,” says a six-page letter from the parliamentary director of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group, Thorsten Frei, to the head of the Chancellery, Wolfgang Schmidt.
Against this background, it is very astonishing that the federal government has “so far taken a passive stance on the compulsory vaccination debate and has left it with mere references to the Bundestag”, criticized Frei in the letter. MEPs could only make responsible decisions if they had comprehensive information, sound legal assessments and a valid picture of the situation at their disposal. The CDU politician asked Schmidt to answer the catalog of questions before the end of the year.
Among other things, the Union parliamentary group asks whether the federal government wants to submit its own draft law “in view of the fundamental rights-relevant dimension of the subject and the legal complexity and the need for justification”. The impression must be avoided that the government is indifferent to the margins or stealing from responsibility. “This would only be more nourishment for the uncertainty of the people in our country and poison for the resolute fight against the pandemic.”
Ethics Council for Compulsory Vaccination
The questionnaire asks, among other things, the possibilities of checking and enforcing a mandatory vaccination, the establishment of a vaccination register and the dangers for the critical infrastructures in the areas of health, food, electricity and water supply.
The Ethics Council had previously presented the expected recommendation on a general vaccination requirement. The committee is in favor of extending the mandatory vaccination for employees in clinics or nursing homes to “substantial parts of the population”. According to the federal-state resolution, the Bundestag and the federal government should speed up the preparations and present a schedule at short notice. It is envisaged that the Bundestag will vote on a possible introduction without being forced into a parliamentary group. After the federal-state consultations on Tuesday, Chancellor Scholz said about a general vaccination requirement: “I do not think that we should refrain from it.”