I.In the Union there is growing pressure to give the federal government more rights in the fight against the pandemic. After Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) said before Easter that she was thinking about how this could be regulated, the Chancellery is currently holding talks with the federal states about which federal responsibilities could be agreed.
It is about a binding enforcement of the so-called emergency brake, which ties measures against the pandemic to the number of new infections. There is still no agreement. Merkel had always made it clear that she only wanted to adopt greater federal competence in agreement with the states.
Three CDU members of the Bundestag have now made a further advance. Its aim is that in the future decisions can be made at the federal level, for example on measures to restrict public life in the fight against the corona pandemic. So far, the federal states have issued the relevant ordinances.
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The members of the Bundestag Norbert Röttgen, Yvonne Magwas and Johann Wadepuhl have written to around a hundred members of the Union parliamentary group and campaigned for a tightening of the Infection Protection Act. In the letter that the FAZ has received, it is said that the Bundestag and Bundesrat have stated several times that the global Covid 19 pandemic means an “epidemic of national importance” for Germany. National laws have been adapted accordingly, in particular the Federal Infection Protection Act now provides all the necessary instruments for appropriate action in the pandemic. In the current version of the law, the decision to make use of the instruments lies with the federal states, which have coordinated their actions in the pandemic nationwide for a year in the format of the conference between the Federal Chancellor and the Prime Ministers.
Not only the federal states should implement the measures
The three MPs continue to write: “Most recently, however, an agreement on joint action was no longer possible. This made the weakness of the Infection Protection Act visible, which consists in the fact that this law only empowers the state governments to issue statutory ordinances with which the goals of the law are to be fulfilled, but not the federal government. “The Bundestag must” quickly close this gap in the Infection Protection Act “.
It is a “question of our responsibility as federal legislators” to give the federal government the same options for action as the states, “namely to ensure the implementation of the national goals of the Infection Protection Act by means of a statutory ordinance”. Since the federal government also bears the main financial consequences, it must at least also have regulatory authority for the actual measures to contain the pandemic, it says in the letter. “Time is running out. The three initiators demand that the coalition factions introduce a corresponding bill into the Bundestag as soon as possible.
The members of the parliament, who did not include officials from the federal government, had been asked to indicate by Thursday noon whether they supported the initiative. More than fifty parliamentarians have done that so far. The chairman of the Union parliamentary group, Ralph Brinkhaus (CDU), has not commented on the advance by Röttgen, Magwas and Wadepuhl. Recently, however, Brinkhaus had made it clear that he was also in favor of greater competence for the Bundestag. Should the Bundestag faction support the initiative, the Union would then have to convince the SPD to participate.
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