Armin Laschet had to wait five hours for his questioning. Shortly after 8 p.m. the time has come when his appearance in front of the members of the parliament in the round state parliament room A3-02 in Düsseldorf for the devastating flood disaster in July.
Laschet sits in front of the “Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry on Floods”. He speaks calmly, he exudes a self-confidence, as if he was still what he was until October: the head of government of North Rhine-Westphalia. Doubts about the decision of his government, which was massively criticized by the SPD and the Greens, not to set up a crisis team in Düsseldorf at the height of this “catastrophe of historic proportions”, he wipes off the table.
“There were no discussions about it,” he asserts again and again. Laschet never considered activating a “large crisis team” (with state secretaries or even ministers) instead of a “coordination group” at official level. In the coordination group, which Laschet calls his “small crisis team”, “were the people who do it” – a group of officials, enriched with representatives from the Federal Police, the German Armed Forces and Telekom. And because he suspects that not everyone in the investigative committee believes him that way, he refers to a visitor who was switched on via video on July 16: “Even the Chancellor did not ask whether this was the real or the wrong crisis team.”
Laschet says he supports the education. Then he goes into defense mode
In a brief statement, the 60-year-old CDU politician looked back on the worst flood in the 75-year history of North Rhine-Westphalia. He described moments that moved him, people who touched him. “We all still have the images from those days in mind, of the thundering masses of water that sweep everything away.” Laschet now speaks urgently. “Anyone who has seen these pictures will not forget these pictures. Many memories accompany me to this day.” According to Laschet, these include “personally formative encounters with people who have lost everything”.
The main lesson for him is that the water came from places that no one would have perceived as a threat. “We have to provide more targeted information. When we warn of flooding on rivers in the Rhineland, someone with a trickle behind their house doesn’t see it as a warning.” He supports the coming to terms with the disaster.
But speculation that he had already dealt with an impending flood five days before the catastrophe night of July 14th, Laschet throws off. The SPD member Ralf Jäger holds the Prime Minister a. D. A list of all his cell phone calls in connection with the flood that Laschet had to submit to the committee. Talks there with his confidante and State Chancellery boss Nathanael Liminski began on July 9th, which is why the Social Democrat speculates that it must have had something to do with the flood. Otherwise the individual call records would be blacked out. Laschet parried: They simply sent the committee more data than necessary. “We can blacken more.”
In the next few minutes he repeats three times when exactly he became sensitive to storms: “I only dealt with the subject from July 13th.” He had never seen the heavy rain forecasts and spring tide warnings from the European Efas early warning system, which localized the impending catastrophe fairly correctly three days before the flood: “Weather maps are not the prime minister’s job.”
The SPD and the Greens tried on Monday to postpone Laschet’s appearance before the committee until next year. However, the CDU and FDP had rejected this. The opposition interpreted it as a maneuver to give Laschet’s late-evening questioning – the committee meeting had already been running for ten hours – as little public response as possible. Two firefighters and the appearances of Laschet’s successor Hendrik Wüst (CDU) and his State Secretary Liminski were apparently intended to serve as a media firewall.
Laschet’s successor, Hendrik Wüst, also defends himself against criticism
It became apparent early on that Wüst would not work up a sweat that day. The 46-year-old lawyer seems to parry all questions in the afternoon – until after a good hour the SPD MP Jäger will push him into the corner. Wüst makes it clear right away that, as the transport minister at the time, he had little to do with emergency calls or flashing lights, saving lives or some kind of crisis team: “Disaster control is not part of my portfolio.”
Wüst was far away in those horror days, spent holidays on the North Sea with his family. “But the vacation was de facto over on July 14th,” says the CDU politician. Then the first reports of disaster reached him. On the day when the floods reached their peak everywhere in North Rhine-Westphalia, crisis management also began for the Münsterländer. Which in the case of a transport minister means: “I am primarily responsible for the reconstruction.”
It became apparent early on that the opposition of the SPD and the Greens would hardly be able to add anything to this member of the black and yellow state government. His ministry at the time had nothing to do with weather data. Instead, it seems, the Social Democrats want to put Wüst in the gray light that he only played a minor role. This is primarily aimed at the role that Wüst is now filling: the hypothermic lawyer is now prime minister. And the top candidate of his CDU for May 15, 2022. Then there are state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia.