So Udo Juergens. There is a song “that fits these times,” said the Prime Minister on Thursday. No, Markus Söder doesn’t sing, he just quotes the refrain as a source of encouragement: “The sun rises again and again. And again a day brings a light for us.” So Söder (CSU) ends the parliamentary year 2021. Before that, he spoke in the state parliament about the corona pandemic, of course, the defining topic of the year. And about good things. Less crime, low unemployment, many births in Bavaria. What Söder omits in his review of the year: the mask affair. Ilse Aigner (CSU) is different. “Shabby and harmful,” says the President of the State Parliament.
The closing words in the state parliament are called closing words, because then the parliamentary work is over until the end of the Christmas holidays. This time it’s different. Instead of going straight on vacation, some MPs march from the plenary hall into the conference hall of the state parliament. It all started just a few steps from the conference hall, in room N 413, raid in the office of CSU MP Alfred Sauter. It was in mid-March when the affair about dubious deals with corona protective masks reached the Maximilianeum. Now, in mid-December, the parliamentary educational work begins in the room next door: day one in the committee of inquiry, which is officially called “Mask”.
It was not until Wednesday that the state parliament officially decided to set up the committee. All parliamentary groups agreed, only one sneaked out of the plenary chamber before the vote: Sauter, no longer a member of the CSU parliamentary group. The committee members declared him “Affected” on Thursday, as it is called in the jargon.
This means, among other things, that Sauter has the right to remain silent if he could incriminate himself in the committee. It will take some time before he is questioned. First, eleven committee members from six political groups have to study files. At its constituent meeting, the committee requested a list of the first relevant files from the state government.
There are several names involved, such as Sauter and Tandler
Winfried Bausback (CSU) said in the conference room on Thursday that they wanted to get started “quickly and quickly”. The former Minister of Justice will head the body because the CSU is the largest parliamentary group in the state parliament. The questionnaire includes 234 questions to examine the influence of MPs and possible commissions for government contracts since January 1, 2016. The period to be examined alone, five years, suggests that the committee will drag on.
The specific cases that the committee wants to shed light on not only include the Sauter case, in which around 1.2 million euros are said to have flowed into the mediation of mask deals – which, according to the Munich Higher Regional Court, does not fall under corruption. Sauter himself has always denied such allegations. Also mentioned in the questionnaire is the entrepreneur Andrea Tandler, daughter of the former CSU minister Gerold Tandler, against whom no investigations are ongoing, but who also earned money in mask deals.
The committee is supposed to clarify, for example, what role an SMS from the CSU MEP Monika Hohlmeier to the former CSU health minister Melanie Huml played in connection with an offer to her ministry. Huml could be one of the first witnesses on the committee. A list of all witnesses from politics and authorities should be available in February.
The committee will meet for the next meeting in mid-January, then twice a week. Some in the CSU fear that the procedure will drag on until the end of the legislative period in autumn 2023. “I hope that, in the interests of the population, we will get results more quickly,” says Winfried Bausback, the committee chairman of the CSU. With a view to the state elections in 2023, a quick end should also be in the interests of his party.