So now the cabinet is taking the stand. The mask inquiry committee is on the home stretch, and a number of ministers have been invited to the final hearings – before Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) is due to answer questions in a week and a half. Florian Herrmann (CSU), head of the State Chancellery, is close to Söder. For more than four hours on Monday, he was one of the first members of the government to answer questions from MPs. In particular, the investigative body was interested in a huge deal that the then Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) had initiated. On April 7, 2020, a plane from China landed at Munich Airport under a bright blue sky, with tons of urgently needed masks in the hold. But in the end it was all a bit of a flop.
The “dissection” of the processes is legitimate
Herrmann initially referred to “challenging times” in the first few months of 2020, “we were all faced with a task for which nobody was prepared, we weren’t, but neither were we anywhere in the world”. There was “no blueprint” and the acute shortage of masks had become apparent through all the calls for help from clinics and doctor’s offices. That’s why they took over the purchases, which were actually not the task of the state. Saving human lives is a constitutional mandate – “I think we were successful with that too”. Certified protective equipment “in maximum quality, maximum number, maximum speed”, that’s what it was all about. First of all, they were “grateful for every tip” and then “separate the wheat from the chaff, qualitatively from, to put it Bavarian, glump”. It was clear to him from the outset that there would be questions “when the fog has lifted and the emergency situation is no longer immediately apparent”: from public prosecutors, from the Court of Auditors and from a sub-committee. This “dissection” of the events at that time was legitimate.
So to the bulk delivery around Scheuer. In March 2020, Bavaria bought more than ten million masks from a Passau company. The tip came from the CSU Federal Minister, who comes from Passau and knew the entrepreneur “very casually”, as he himself said in the U-Committee in October. In contrast to the procurement of masks by Alfred Sauter, ex-CSU minister and now non-attached in the state parliament, no commission was paid according to the current situation. But it turned out that many masks did not meet the norms; they were blocked and later replaced when the shortage was less. Above all, photos are remembered – of Söder, Scheuer and Herrmann on that April day on the runway, where they received the freight from China in a PR-friendly manner.
The Scheuer offer was a “kind of liberation,” said Herrmann in the committee — to show that progress is being made, “not just in tortuous steps.” Committee chief Winfried Bausback (CSU) and deputy Florian Siekmann (Greens) made numerous files available to the State Chancellery Minister. For example, a handwritten note: The Ministry of Health and its offices would have to contact the Passau business people “immediately” (underlined by Herrmann) – “rush” (underlined twice). Apparently, Söder himself saw it similarly, from whom there is an alleged SMS in the files of the investigation committee; to the then State Secretary Gerhard Eck (CSU), who also testified on Monday. Söder wrote: “You have to take it, Scheuer has to guarantee it.”
The speedy delivery of so many masks, said Herrmann, seemed “quite promising” to him – especially since Scheuer assured transport via Lufthansa; not a matter of course at that time with restricted airspace. Nevertheless, he suggested “not to buy a pig in a poke” and to include a warranty clause in the contract – which later actually took effect. Markus Rinderspacher (SPD) interjected that, according to the files, the technical departments “had massive doubts about the marketability of the products at an early stage”. “These masks did not help anyone acutely.” It was precisely because of this “feedback that things weren’t going smoothly” that the clause existed, Herrmann replied. The offer “seemed logical overall” – and he “did not want to become a classic skeptic in the hot phase”. Scheuer was “after all” Federal Minister of Transport and the risk “that the hocus-pocus is very low”.
“No reason to assume favoritism or a banana state”
In a statement after Herrmann’s testimony, the Green Siekmann said: It has now been proven in any case that the offer made via Scheuer was “forced in the State Chancellery and passed on with vigor”. And “apparently, as a result of this pressure, technical concerns were initially ignored.” According to Siekmann, this follows the same principle as in other cases: “Whoever had the shortest possible path could place their offer on the right desk.” It is disputed why Scheuer of all things supported the deal from his constituency with aviation capacities. SPD man Rinderspacher spoke of “CSU connections” and “nepotism”, Gerd Mannes (AfD) recognized the head of the state chancellery as having “amazing gaps in memory” and “little interest in enlightenment”. Committee chairman Bausback, on the other hand, said that the “procurement pressure” became clear in Herrmann’s statement, as did the advantage of the Scheuer offer with Lufthansa transport. There is “no reason to assume favoritism or a banana state”.