The traffic light coalition had cleverly built the perfect political back door. Because the FDP would not have supported a government draft for a general obligation to vaccinate, the coalition partners under their experienced Chancellor Olaf Scholz came up with the idea of leaving the project to parliament. An open vote on compulsory vaccination, every member of parliament only committed to their own conscience and not to coalition discipline, the way out for all skeptics. And now this: the back door is stuck. The plan goes neither forward nor backward.
At first it seemed as if the emergency exit could be opened with a strong jerk. For example, when Olaf Scholz confidently announced at the end of January that his traffic light would give him a secure majority when voting on the group applications.
Since then, the Federal Republic has not come a step closer to compulsory vaccination, on the contrary. The Bundestag has just had to postpone the debate on the various legislative proposals for and against compulsory vaccination announced for next week – because the proposals are not yet fully available. This is bitter, especially for the government.
Now is the time for Olaf Scholz to show leadership
Because the delay is, well, again due to the FDP, in whose ranks an application for compulsory vaccination for older people is being prepared. Of course, the Liberals deny that they intentionally delay the project. The application is highly complicated, with an obligation to provide advice, vaccinations and only then – perhaps – a mandatory vaccination. It sounds as if getting vaccinated is a similar emotional-ethical decision as having an abortion or organ donation. The bottom line, however, is that nothing is progressing because the application is not ready.
Meanwhile, the general obligation to vaccinate is getting deeper into dangerous waters. Because you can obviously get through the omicron wave quite well, even without a mandatory spade, there are growing doubts as to whether this obligation should be the means of choice to return to normality. All the more so since the country’s political elite is lost in the greatest possible chaos. From the governing parties to the opposition to the federal states, everyone is happily talking at once. The schedule issued by Scholz – a general vaccination requirement will apply at the end of February, beginning of March – has been ticked off for a long time. In the meantime, people are happy if the announced draft laws for compulsory vaccination can be debated and voted on in the Bundestag by the end of March.
The fact that the emergency exit is stuck is also due to the fact that there is a huge boulder on the other side: the dispute over the implementation of the facility-related vaccination requirement, triggered by the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder today-this-and-tomorrow-that, of course, raises the practical question on what a general obligation to vaccinate is supposed to do if you can’t even implement one that is intended to protect particularly vulnerable people.
Basically, this is the moment when the chancellor could show leadership and show the way through the front door: with his own government proposal.