High costs, little benefit
Court of Auditors criticizes Spahn’s procurement of masks
March 29, 2024, 3:37 a.m
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Health Minister Spahn bought almost six billion protective masks at the beginning of the corona pandemic. Only a third of it is distributed, the rest is destroyed or is still in storage. The Federal Audit Office criticizes the ministry’s “overprocurement” and lack of willingness to provide information.
The Federal Audit Office sharply criticized the procurement of masks in the Corona crisis under Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn. As the “Spiegel” reported, the financial auditors accuse the CDU politician and his ministry of failing to process the matter. “The massive over-procurement of protective masks at the beginning of the corona pandemic by the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) led to persistently high stocks and significant follow-up costs,” says a report from the Federal Audit Office to the Bundestag Budget Committee. “The benefit in combating the pandemic was small compared to this,” it continues.
The report makes it clear how huge the planning errors were during the crisis: of the 5.7 billion protective masks purchased, only 2 billion were distributed, 1.7 billion of them in Germany. It cannot be determined how many masks were actually used. According to the report, 1.2 billion protective masks have now been destroyed, and another 1.7 billion are likely to be burned. In addition, there are almost 800 million protective masks that can still be used, for which there is no “use and distribution concept” – and which will therefore also be disposed of at some point, writes the magazine.
Files classified as classified information
The Court of Auditors also criticized the ministry’s handling of document requests under the Freedom of Information Act (IFG). According to the report, in order to ward off this type of request, documents were apparently systematically classified as “classified information – for official use only” (VS-NfD). “This classification can be used as a reason for rejecting IFG applications without further explanation,” the auditors quote from internal correspondence. To date, the Ministry of Health does not keep any ongoing files to process the procurement of masks, they continue to criticize.
The auditors concluded that the majority of the mask procurement was “of no use in combating the pandemic and therefore of no health policy value.”