Status: 11/22/2021 5:46 p.m.
The proposal for a general vaccination requirement is gaining support. In addition to the CSU top, several CDU prime ministers and SPD representatives spoke out in favor of it. Health Minister Spahn remains skeptical.
The calls for the introduction of a general compulsory vaccination in the fight against the coronavirus are getting louder. Above all, representatives of the CDU and CSU as well as Prime Ministers of Union-led federal states consider this step a sensible measure or even an ultimately unavoidable step.
According to party leader Markus Söder, the CSU board supported the proposal of a general vaccination against the corona virus. In the long run, only a general compulsory vaccination will help, said Söder. Partial compulsory vaccination creates injustice.
Saxony-Anhalt’s Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff (CDU) and Hesse’s Prime Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU) were open to a general vaccination requirement. “A vaccination requirement must be regulated by federal law. If the future federal government presents a corresponding amendment, then I will support that,” said Haseloff of the dpa news agency. According to his government spokesman, Bouffier assumes that it may not be possible to circumvent the general compulsory vaccination in order to get out of the “permanent loop” of ever new corona waves. Bouffier called on the future federal government to soon implement the request made by the Prime Minister’s Conference last week for staff to be vaccinated in certain facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes.
The current federal government wants to stay out of it
The executive federal government wants to stay out of the ongoing debate about a general vaccination requirement. “There is no decision about it now and it would not be made by this federal government either,” said government spokesman Steffen Seibert. From a constitutional point of view, such an obligation is conceivable, added a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Justice. What is required, however, is a legal basis that must also be “proportionately designed”.
The outgoing Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn emphasized that nothing had changed in his skepticism about compulsory corona vaccination. This question doesn’t have to be answered now anyway: “It won’t help us either way in the next four weeks.” But if the new parliamentary majority asked for a bill to be drawn up for mandatory vaccination in certain professional groups, the ministry would of course do so.
Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) was also reluctant to make vaccinations mandatory. This must be discussed in peace. A discussion about the media is not helpful, he said in Berlin.
Also SPD votes for compulsory vaccination
Signals can be heard from the SPD, which is currently negotiating with the Greens and FDP about the formation of the future federal government, in favor of a general vaccination requirement. “In view of the nationwide situation, we can certainly not rule out such a compulsory vaccination for the future, that is correct, and we have to discuss it very seriously,” said Bremen’s Mayor Andreas Bovenschulte. “But it would certainly come too late for the current fourth wave,” added the SPD politician. Yesterday evening, the SPD health politician Karl Lauterbach made it clear that the necessary vaccination quota would obviously not be achieved without compulsory vaccination.
Representatives of professional groups and social groups expressed themselves very differently about a possible vaccination requirement. The intensive care physicians reject compulsory corona vaccination for doctors and nurses. “We are against compulsory vaccination for individual groups,” said Gernot Marx, President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Divi).
On the other hand, the President of Diakonie Deutschland, Ulrich Lilie, advocated compulsory vaccination for staff in old people’s and nursing homes, institutions for the disabled and kindergartens. The President of the German Child Protection Association, Heinz Hilgers, was open to the introduction of a corona vaccination requirement for adults. “Personally, I am in favor of advising on compulsory vaccination for adults and then deciding on it in the spring if the vaccination rate remains so low,” he told the “RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland”.