Bundestag votes against compulsory vaccination from the age of 60

Berlin To the last, the supporters of compulsory vaccination tried to prevent it from failing. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) ordered Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) from the NATO meeting in Brussels to the Bundestag in order to be able to vote. The parliamentary state secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economics, Michael Kellner (Greens), was only connected to an event in the morning to take part in the vote.

That was far from enough. The Bundestag rejected the draft law for compulsory vaccination with a clear majority. 296 MPs voted in favor of the proposal, which provided for such a rule for people over 60 and an obligation to provide advice. 378 voted against. Many had expected that it would be close – but not such a clear defeat. In the end, votes from the FDP parliamentary group, which voted almost unanimously against the application, were missing.

With the result, a project fails that not only Chancellor Scholz has been campaigning for months, but also the 16 prime ministers of the federal states and health minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD).

It has long been clear that the measure the Chancellor had wanted, namely compulsory vaccination for all adults, will not come about. Now the project has failed completely, and the question arises: how could it have happened?

Top jobs of the day

Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.

“It doesn’t help to assign political blame,” Minister Lauterbach wrote on Twitter after the result had been read out in the Bundestag. “We’ll continue.” It was a very important decision, now the fight against Corona will be much more difficult in the fall.

The FDP health expert Andrew Ullmann does not want to give up just yet. “The thread of the conversation shouldn’t break off now,” Ullmann told the broadcaster Phoenix. It is a democratic process. Like Lauterbach, the liberal had supported the application for compulsory vaccination.

However, the previous Bundestag debate was not that conciliatory, on the contrary. In some places, observers had the impression that they were witnessing a blame game, i.e. a shifting of responsibility back and forth.

Andrew Ullman

Before today’s vote, the group around the FDP health experts had approved a compromise proposal for compulsory vaccination from the age of 60.

(Photo: dpa)

Lauterbach also sounded different. Speaking to the Union, he said: “You cannot avoid responsibility by saying you are ready to talk.” The negotiations had been going on for a long time. “Today we need your government support so that we can look different in the fall than we are now.”

The CDU health politician Tino Sorge, on the other hand, accused the traffic light of not having approached the Union seriously. The proposal from the CDU and CSU is balanced. The Union had proposed a “precautionary vaccination mechanism”. Theoretically, this could also provide for compulsory vaccination, but only for certain, particularly vulnerable population and occupational groups. “We are stretching out our hand to you,” Sorge said in the debate to the factions of the traffic light coalition.

The FDP politician Wolfgang Kubicki, who, together with other members of parliament, had submitted an application to increase the willingness to vaccinate without a general obligation to vaccinate, argued against the obligation. Vaccination will not achieve herd immunity, and there will probably not be an overload of the healthcare system – a much more dangerous variant in autumn is “not the most likely scenario”.

Lauterbach then replied that more dangerous variants were not unlikely in the fall. Kubicki went on to say that it is not the job of the state to oblige adults to protect themselves against their will.

The federal government decided against its own design

The reason for the failure may also be the order in which the Bundestag voted on the various initiatives. Surprisingly, the draft law for compulsory vaccination came first. Proponents had hoped to put this one up for a vote last, in order to gain possible votes from other groups whose motions would previously have been rejected.

Basically, however, failure became apparent months ago. Since a majority of the SPD, Greens and FDP was questionable from the start due to concerns among parts of the Liberals, the federal government decided against presenting a bill.

Instead, the traffic light chose the path via group applications from MPs from different parliamentary groups. However, that made finding a majority and negotiations difficult, as has been particularly evident in the past few days.

From the beginning of the considerations for compulsory vaccination, most supporters had a motion by a group of politicians from the SPD, Greens and FDP, which provided for compulsory vaccination from the age of 18. However, a large group remained undecided – or positioned itself against such a measure. A majority was always out of reach.

Last week Chancellor Scholz asked the Union for talks to negotiate a possible compromise. Without the votes of the CDU and CSU, no proposal for compulsory vaccination would have stood a chance. The meeting, however, remained fruitless – and so the peaks of the application for compulsory vaccination from the age of 18 began with Plan B, namely finding a majority in the traffic light.

Corona vaccination from the age of 60 fails significantly

At the beginning of the week, they further weakened their proposal that vaccination should now be compulsory from the age of 50. This was aimed at the second group of vaccination advocates around the FDP health politician Ullmann. He had proposed a duty of advice for all adults, which could lead to a possible vaccination requirement from the age of 50.

But Ullmann waved the proposal of the first group down – in the SPD they say that it was actually agreed otherwise. Ullmann’s no forced the traffic light to further talks.

As a compromise, the two groups suggested that people aged 60 and over must be able to show they are vaccinated or recovered from October 15. Depending on the pandemic situation, knowledge about virus variants and vaccination rate, the Bundestag could also suspend this obligation beforehand.

Read here: Lauterbach’s U-turn – “A mistake for which I am also personally responsible”

With a resolution in September at the earliest, the Bundestag could have extended the obligation to people aged 18 and over. The group’s draft law also provided for an obligation to provide advice and the establishment of a vaccination register.

This motion was the only draft law that was drafted on Thursday. But the short-term agreed compromise had two problems. Not all of Ullmann’s group supported the new proposal. In particular, the Liberals formed against it.

“I was inclined to agree to the application for advice because I would have found the procedure to be very useful,” said FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr before the vote. “As this proposal has been withdrawn, I cannot agree to any of the motions that are on the table. I will put a statement on that for the record.”

The second problem: the vaccination advocates of the traffic light had not managed to win members of the Union for their application until the very end. They had included demands from the CDU and CSU like a vaccination register. But the Union stuck to its own proposal to the end. “The SPD is apparently trying to get votes from the Union by insulting them. Remarkable strategy”, CDU MP Johannes Steiniger quoted a text message he received during the debate in a tweet.

More: All developments in the Corona Newsblog


source site-18