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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) took a serious blow on Thursday morning: the bill he advocated for compulsory vaccination for people over 60 did not even achieve an approximate majority in the Bundestag. It was clear in advance that the end would come: Scholz recalled his foreign minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) from the NATO summit in Brussels to vote in Berlin. But Baerbock’s voice was to no avail.
When Scholz’ coalition took office in December, Scholz made it clear that he and Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) would advocate a vaccination obligation, on pain of a fine. Even then it became clear that there was no consensus on this within the coalition and that party members of the liberal FDP would vote against. Under pressure from the FDP faction, the vote on compulsory vaccination was turned into a ‘question of conscience’, without group discipline. This is not unusual in the Bundestag for major moral issues. In the case of the vaccination obligation, it degenerated into chaos.
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Also read this piece about the dilemmas of the German liberals about the vaccination obligation: ‘We have to consider which measures are ultimately the more lenient.’
Bundestag members could vote for no fewer than four proposals on Thursday. In addition to the proposal for compulsory vaccination from the age of 60, defended by Scholz and Lauterbach (296 votes out of 678), the CDU/CSU faction presented a variant in which every citizen would be registered whether he or she has been vaccinated, and depending on this a load information on the doormat could expect to be persuasive. The CDU/CSU drafters of the proposal then wanted everyone to be vaccinated as soon as a new deadly variant appeared. That proposal received 172 votes. Both the liberal ruling party FDP and the right-wing populist AfD came up with their own proposals to thwart the vaccination obligation.
for the fall
In Germany, the number of corona infections is slowly falling. On Thursday morning, the Robert-Koch Institute reported more than 200,000 new infections within 24 hours, and 328 deaths from Covid-19. On average 1,251 people are infected per 100,000 inhabitants per week.
The milder course of the Omikron variant has changed the discussion about compulsory vaccination; it is likely that the coalition of Scholz would have got their hands together in December for a mandatory vaccination. Scholz and Lauterbach continued to emphasize that mandatory vaccination is now necessary for a new wave in the fall. In addition, Lauterbach said in the debate on Thursday morning, we are now taking 200 to 300 deaths into the bargain because of the Omikron variant.
The CDU-CSU faction calls the vaccination obligation now, at a time when ICUs are not in danger of becoming overloaded, disproportionate. The Scholz and Lauterbach camp calls it forward-thinking. In December, the Christian Democrats were also in favor of compulsory vaccination; The fact that they now made a watered-down proposal (mandatory vaccination, but only with a new variant), ultimately helped the opponents of the mandatory corona vaccination to victory.
Compulsory vaccination was one of Scholz’s first big plans in December. The fact that he has to take a loss for that purpose damages his authority. Opposition member Sahra Wagenknecht (Die Linke) accused Scholz in the debate of a proposal that is so outdated that he only wanted to assert his authority – the opposite was the result.
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