There were strange decisions
Berlin’s ex-mayor calls for corona amnesty
April 8, 2024, 7:45 a.m
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You are always wiser in hindsight. Political decision-makers admit that not all decisions in the pandemic were compelling. But some of them made bizarre judgments at the time. Some of these can be reversed, says Berlin’s former mayor Müller.
A year after the end of the last Corona protection requirements, SPD member of the Bundestag Michael Müller suggested a waiver of penalties for violations during the pandemic. “We know from today’s perspective that some measures were not as compelling as we thought at the time,” said the former chairman of the Prime Minister’s Conference to the Berlin “Tagesspiegel”. “That’s why I think we can also think about an amnesty.”
However, it must be legally comprehensible which procedures are being stopped and why. “We would need clear criteria for this,” added Müller, who, as Governing Mayor of Berlin, also led rounds of prime ministers during the pandemic. Together with the then Chancellor Angela Merkel, the meetings discussed things like Corona policy in Germany.
As the newspaper reported, a 21-year-old in Berlin recently received a fine because he was on the street with a total of six people instead of a maximum of five people during lockdown three years ago. “These are curiosities of our constitutional state. In this matter, I rely on the authorities’ common sense and discretion, especially in a case like this,” said Müller.
In general, the SPD politician spoke out in favor of a better approach to dealing with the pandemic. “However, you can’t just paint this time in black. We as a society have also learned a lot during the pandemic,” he said. He refuses to apologize to the population for all politics during the pandemic. “We have to be self-critical and point out mistakes where they were made,” he said. You can also apologize for some of them. “But an apology for the Corona period as a whole would not be appropriate.” A lot of lives have been saved through politics.