There are now three counter-proposals to compulsory vaccination from the age of 18. In addition, the vote is increasingly being postponed to the spring phase of the easing of the pandemic. The SPD and Greens, who advocate compulsory vaccination, are heading for defeat.
The chancellor wasn’t even in office when he had to announce the first reversal: a week before his election by the Bundestag, Olaf Scholz announced that he was in favor of general vaccination after all. The omicron variant of the corona virus, which was even more difficult to assess at the time, was only on its way to Germany. The designated head of government said that the obligation should “take effect at the beginning of March, beginning of February”. If it had actually come so quickly, a presumably higher vaccination rate would have reduced the number of serious illnesses during the current omicron wave.
Also because such a tight timetable quickly turned out to be impossible – the most recent timetable provides for a decision by the Bundestag by the beginning of April – both Scholz and his Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach have been talking for weeks about the general vaccination requirement from the age of 18 being primarily a measure in preparation for fall. “The vaccination requirement is necessary for next autumn and winter,” Scholz confirmed on Wednesday. But it will probably not come to that either.
The bringers of the legislative proposal supported by Scholz and Lauterbach clearly lack the majority. It is primarily SPD and Greens MPs who are promoting this, but are not sure of their own party colleagues. The majority of FDP MPs tend towards their own model of mandatory vaccination from the age of 50 or to the Wolfgang Kubicki proposal to introduce no mandatory vaccination at all. The Union has presented a model that gradually makes vaccination compulsory only when a dangerous corona variant appears. The CDU and CSU rule out support for the other motions.
The Union will not join any of the group applications, said the CDU right-wing politician Jan-Marco Luczak ntv.de. “The federal government is responsible for presenting its own draft law.” The fact that the traffic light does not have its own majority on this central issue is “a blatant leadership failure on the part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, that must be made clear,” said Luczak. If the traffic light is ready to accept parts of the Union’s application, one can talk about forming a new initiative.
Approaching the Union
Both Lauterbach and Scholz had refused to introduce a government legislative proposal. Both had campaigned with the understandable argument that such a serious encroachment on people’s right to self-determination must be a decision of conscience on the part of the deputies, freed from all faction constraints. With that, however, they gave up the process and will probably have to live with the fact that there will not be a general obligation to vaccinate.
The positive signals from SPD leader Saskia Esken and parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich towards the Union faction are signs that this insight is also penetrating the SPD parliamentary group. Esken finds their model of a risk-oriented age staggering of compulsory vaccination worth considering. However, the majority of the SPD still rejects the fact that the obligation to vaccinate the elderly who are particularly at risk only applies when a new dangerous corona variant appears. “The fact that Rolf Mützenich is making an offer to talk to the Union faction may be due to the fact that there may not be a majority for the individual applications,” Luczak suspects in an interview with ntv.de.
Around 2.8 million people over the age of 59 are still unvaccinated in Germany. There are also around 7.7 million unvaccinated people aged 18 to 59. The latter age group is hardly among the corona patients treated in the hospital, at least not in a significantly higher number than the vaccinated people of the same age. The vaccinated, boosted and recovered are also involved in the transmission of the virus in the omicron variants. The only strong case for universal vaccination that remains is preparing for one that is more dangerous than the omicron variant. Serious epidemiologists and virologists consider their occurrence to be probable. But is that enough?
A lot of imponderables
In the debate about a general obligation to vaccinate, in addition to the question of what is medically required, the question of feasibility and proportionality must also be weighed up. In addition to practical organizational issues, the feasibility of a general compulsory vaccination for all adults is questioned above all by the fact that preventive compulsory vaccination is very difficult to convey to people. The question of proportionality is also serious, because neither the individual protection provided by a vaccination nor its contribution to protecting the health system from overload can be predicted – precisely because it is not clear how future variations of the coronavirus will affect it. That’s quite a lot of uncertainties for the fact that the state wants to impose large fines on people if necessary and de facto stigmatize them.
For these and other considerations, so far hardly any MPs from other parliamentary groups have joined the general vaccination requirement, which is demanded above all by the Social Democrats and Greens. However, further withdrawal movements from both factions are to be expected. Against this background, it is surprising that in the orientation debate in the Bundestag in January only SPD MPs who were convinced of the obligation to vaccinate spoke. The proposal for compulsory vaccinations from the age of 50, on the other hand, is also brought forward by MPs from the SPD and the Greens.
The order decides
When the three group proposals come to the vote after the readings in the two session weeks in March, as well as the Union proposal, which is only a request to draft a law, the still unclear order of voting will be of interest to all camps. If the most far-reaching proposal for compulsory vaccination for everyone over the age of 18 comes first, supporters of compulsory vaccination from the age of 50 are likely to vote against it.
The vaccination advocates would have to gather after a defeat behind the vaccination requirement from the age of 50. If this proposal comes to the vote first, the vaccination camp would have to agree even more, otherwise they would end up with no vaccination obligation or with the Union’s proposal. However, it does not provide for preventive vaccination, but one that only takes effect in the acute situation, which Federal Minister of Health Lauterbach still firmly rejects.
How things will continue is open. FDP MP Konstantin Kuhle complained that “a lot of pressure could be seen” in individual interviews with MPs from other camps to vote along the lines of the parliamentary group. The leadership of the SPD and Greens denies that these lines exist. Nevertheless, with their clear pleas for a general obligation to vaccinate, they indirectly point the way.
From the SPD and Greens camp, on the other hand, it can be heard that the FDP advocates of compulsory vaccinations from the age of 50 have deliberately delayed the reading of a first draft law until March – knowing that with the falling corona numbers in the spring, general vaccination will be increasingly difficult to convey . FDP MP Andrew Ullmann firmly rejects this: “Thoroughness before speed” applies. But it is clear that the question of compulsory vaccination is dividing the government factions. That is the price for the fact that the coalition leaders did not want to or could not bring in a joint proposal for compulsory vaccination.