Wednesday March 24th 2021
Toll debacle
But no access to Scheuer mail data
The opposition is experiencing a setback when trying to clear up what happened around the failed car toll. The Federal Court of Justice has revoked a decision on the release of the mail data from Transport Minister Scheuer. The reason: evidence inaccessible.
The opposition suspects that Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer has not disclosed all relevant communication about the failed car toll. At the beginning of the year, the opposition received support from the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) to clarify the toll affair, which has so far cost almost 80 million euros in tax money. This allowed access to log files in the CSU politician’s business e-mail accounts. But now the court in Karlsruhe has revised the previous decision.
The BGH overturned the ruling that files can generally be released – because they are no longer available. This emerges from a letter from the BGH investigating judge to the investigative committee of the Bundestag. The request for evidence by MPs from the Greens, the Left and the FDP is thus aimed at “unreachable evidence”.
The opposition factions had sued because the committee majority had rejected a request for evidence. She suggested that conclusions could be drawn from the log files about the type, frequency, duration and participants of e-mail traffic.
The letter from the BGH investigating judge refers to a letter from Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble from February. The chairman of the committee of inquiry, Udo Schiefner from the SPD, said in February that Schäuble had announced that the log files of the Bundestag’s email system were only backed up for three months by resolution of the Council of Elders on December 17, 2015. The requirement of the opposition parties to hand over the so-called log files to Scheuer’s parliamentary mail account could therefore not be met at all. Schiefner had viewed the request for publication critically.
Even without emails, Scheuer’s errors can be proven
The Green transport politician Oliver Krischer had said that the aim of the application was the mail connection data from the last three months and to what extent Scheuer had communicated via his Bundestag account as a minister and, in particular, deleted mails in connection with the car toll. These data are available. FDP chairman Christian Jung said: “Even without further alleged e-mails from the CSU and from Federal Minister Scheuer about the car toll debacle, we can prove in many ways that Mr. Scheuer violates European law, public procurement law and budget law with the car toll Has.”
The German model for a car toll failed in the summer of 2019 before the European Court of Justice. The opposition accuses Scheuer, among other things, of having concluded contracts before there was legal certainty. Scheuer rejects the allegations. The proposed operators are demanding 560 million euros in damages after the federal government terminated the contracts immediately after the judgment.
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