Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), despite skeptical statements from the ranks of the co-governing FDP, is opting for general corona vaccination. The goal does not only extend to the traffic light parties, said government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit on Monday in Berlin. The federal states emphasized this again on Wednesday at the Prime Ministers’ Conference, with the governments being led by the Left, CDU, CSU, Greens and SPD. The chancellor had explained his intention that – if there was such broad approval – “one should have the prudence to convert this majority into a parliamentary majority in the parliamentary procedure”.
Hebestreit made it clear that a procedure “from the middle of Parliament and away from individual coalition or faction constraints” had been deliberately chosen. The topic is increasingly causing tensions within the traffic light coalition, and Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) recently expressed skepticism about it.
Scholz himself advocates general vaccination from the age of 18. According to information from the German Press Agency, 231 MPs now support a corresponding draft, which was introduced by a group of MPs led by SPD parliamentary group Vice Dirk Wiese and the Greens health expert Janosch Dahmen.