Monday 22 November 2021
Lauterbach on the seriousness of the situation
“The moment of compulsory vaccination has come”
In view of the increasing corona numbers, more and more politicians are in favor of a general compulsory vaccination. After Kretschmann and Söder, now also SPD health expert Lauterbach. Lawyers consider such a regulation to be constitutionally possible.
The SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach speaks out in favor of the introduction of a general vaccination requirement. “I see it like Frank-Walter Steinmeier. What still has to happen so that people can comfortably endure a harmless vaccination, at least for the purpose of protecting others,” he says in the ntv talk #beisenherz (11.30 p.m. on ntv, repeats Tuesday 5.15 a.m. and 5.10 p.m.). He is referring to it on a similar sentence from the Federal President. “From my point of view, the time has come for the vaccination to be compulsory,” Lauterbach continues.
You are now in a situation with this combination of incredibly high infectivity of the delta variant and a high number of those who are not willing to vaccinate. “We really have to consider compulsory vaccination,” he says. “And I would meanwhile also support that, because otherwise we will have the same problem again next fall.”
In addition to Lauterbach, other politicians have spoken out in favor of a general vaccination requirement. For example, Baden-Württemberg’s Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann of the Greens wrote in a guest article for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” together with Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder: “A vaccination requirement is not a violation of civil liberties. Rather, it is a prerequisite for us to regain our freedom . ” CSU boss Söder, like other Union prime ministers, had previously spoken out in favor of compulsory vaccination.
Hesse’s Prime Minister Volker Bouffier has also shown himself to be open to a general vaccination requirement. The CDU politician believes that it may not be possible to circumvent this in order to get out of the “permanent loop” of ever new corona waves. That said a government spokesman in Wiesbaden. Saxony-Anhalt’s Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff said: “A compulsory vaccination must be regulated by federal law. If the future federal government presents a corresponding amendment, then I will support it.”
Experts: Constitutionally possible
Several legal experts consider a general vaccination requirement to be constitutionally possible. It is a special intervention, “if the state is now also impairing the physical integrity of the people,” said administrative lawyer Hinnerk Wißmann from the University of Münster to “Welt”. However, an obligation is the milder means “if the alternative is to abolish the free state in endless lockdown loops”.
Uwe Volkmann, professor of public law at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, said that the individual intervention depth of a mandatory vaccination is less than “the serious restrictions on freedom that would otherwise be necessary”. Thorsten Kingreen from the University of Regensburg believes it is out of the question that the Federal Constitutional Court will generally declare a general vaccination requirement to be inadmissible. Currently, however, milder measures have not been exhausted, which is necessary for proportionality, he told the “Welt”.
The constitutional lawyer Volker Boehme-Neßler from the University of Oldenburg considers a general vaccination requirement to be “disproportionate and therefore unconstitutional as long as there are opportunities for communication”. “Contrary to what the top politicians claim, the state and politics have by no means already communicated enough with the skeptical citizens.”