Two new investigative committees in the state parliament will start their work this Thursday in constitutive sessions – on the cost explosion and construction delay of the second S-Bahn trunk line in Munich and on the Nuremberg Museum of the Future. They are the third and fourth investigative bodies in this election period, after the sub-committees on the mask affairs and the NSU terrorist cell. The parliamentary inquiries must be completed before the state election on October 8th.
The committee on the Nuremberg Museum, which will open in 2021 and is a branch of the Deutsches Museum, should primarily examine the rental conditions for the building. The opposition suspects that tax money was wasted here and that CSU nepotism was practiced. It should also be about the role of Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) himself, who was Finance Minister at the time in question.
The FDP MP Sebastian Körber, for example, says that Söder pushed the project through in his hometown, “no matter what the cost”. The Bavarian Supreme Court of Auditors has already criticized the fact that the 25-year contract with the investor Gerd Schmelzer is “landlord-friendly”. The main route is about the fact that the government had apparently been warned since 2020 that construction could be delayed by many years and the costs would get out of hand. For a long time, however, she refrained from publicly informing about the looming disaster.
Söder recently had the U-Committee Museum Nuremberg News said: “This committee of inquiry is nothing more than the opposition’s election campaign, because they themselves have no ideas for the future.” He also finds it “a pity that some have so little love for Nuremberg”. The allegations are an “absurd argument”.
The CSU parliamentary group recently announced that the “attempts at scandalization” would now be countered with transparency and serious clarification. Bernhard Pohl (free voters) heads the main route committee, while Josef Schmid (CSU) leads the meetings at the museum; i.e. representatives of the government factions. Schmid was previously deputy head of the NSU committee, which is now to be taken over by party colleague Holger Dremel.