Status: 03.12.2021 2:56 p.m.
The interior ministers of the federal states want to enforce the corona measures with strict controls. They announced this at their conference in Stuttgart. They also agreed on a nationwide competence center in order to be able to fight crises.
With yesterday’s resolutions by the federal and state governments to contain the pandemic, unvaccinated people in particular have to meet strict requirements. Only those who have been vaccinated or have recovered will then have access to shops, cinemas and stadiums. In principle, a mask is also required almost everywhere. The interior ministers of the federal states have now announced at their conference in Stuttgart that they want to decisively enforce the requirement – with more stringent controls.
“Unfortunately, we need stricter rules – and then also stricter monitoring,” said Baden-Württemberg Interior Minister Thomas Strobl, chairman of the conference. He pointed out that in Baden-Württemberg alone there have been more than two million personal and almost 790,000 vehicle controls to comply with the pandemic rules in the past few months.
The Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann also currently considers the fight against corona violations to be more important than the use of speeders and illegal parking. You have to ensure that what was decided on Thursday is actually followed, he told the dpa news agency. “There is a small minority who think you can disregard that. The police have to intervene.”
“Crisis radar device” is supposed to identify dangers
The interior ministers also agreed to use a new nationwide competence center to identify crises in Germany more quickly and to combat them earlier. Strobl announced that it would install a “crisis radar device”. Artificial intelligence can process huge amounts of data very quickly in order to identify crises at an early stage, he emphasized.
Lower Saxony’s Interior Minister Boris Pistorius encouraged greater efforts to prepare for emergency situations. “We need a national crisis command in peacetime,” he said, referring to the corona pandemic and flood disasters. Pistorius welcomed the reintroduction of sirens to alert the population. The 88 million euros provided by the federal government for this purpose are, however, far too little, since costs of 100 million euros were incurred in his state alone.
Incitement in messenger services
The interior ministers also decided to take more decisive action against hatred, agitation and anti-Semitism on the Internet. Starting next year, providers of social networks will have to report illegal content to the Federal Criminal Police Office. Messenger services such as Telegram are still excluded from this.
“But there, too, hatred and agitation are a massive problem, they achieve a high reach,” explained Strobl. No unlawful areas should arise there. The interior ministers had agreed that an adjustment had to be made here urgently. His official colleague from Lower Saxony, Pistorius, said that it must now be implemented that the service is controlled according to the Network Enforcement Act.
Fight against homophobia
On the initiative of Hamburg and Berlin, the ministers also spoke out in favor of stricter measures in the fight against homophobia and trans-hostile violence. “In a liberal, open society, we cannot tolerate people being hostile, threatened and attacked because of their sexual orientation and sometimes no longer being able to move freely and without fear in public,” said Hamburg’s Senator for the Interior, Andy Grote.
The aim of the initiative is therefore to increase the willingness to report violence against sexual minorities, as this can only be prosecuted in this way. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and intersex people should be better protected, according to Grote. According to the interior authorities, the BKA recorded 782 crimes nationwide due to sexual orientation in the past year. However, the interior ministers assumed a high number of unreported attacks that were not reported.