In the committee of inquiry into the Nuremberg Future Museum, the Greens, SPD and FDP questioned the quality of the two expert opinions that had recently dispelled the accusation of wasting tax money. These have “deficiencies that need to be explained,” said Sebastian Körber (FDP) on Tuesday. According to Verena Osgyan (Greens), the two reports are unsuitable for “cleansing the museum and Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) of all allegations”. The traffic light factions point out that another, comparatively detailed report comes to a completely different conclusion – namely that the Free State is clearly being overreached when it comes to renting the museum.
The public sector is paying real estate investor Gerd Schmelzer a monthly rent of more than 230,000 euros for the museum, which will open in 2021. According to the Supreme Court of Auditors (ORH), the costs of the “landlord-friendly” contract add up to 200 million euros over a period of 25 years. The opposition therefore suspects that Söder pushed through the technology museum in his hometown according to the principle “no matter what the cost” and, by urging the project to be implemented quickly, issued a “blank check” for cost explosions.
Recently, however, the U-Committee was sent two analyzes that it had commissioned; by the consulting company Wüest Partner and the real estate service provider Colliers. Their conclusion, so to speak: the rent is comparatively expensive, but not too expensive. Schmelzer’s calculation seems plausible – in view of the tailoring of the special property to the needs of the museum and the good old town location. This supports the line of the government factions CSU and FW, according to which everything went right when the museum was rented. Committee chief Josef Schmid (CSU) said that the attacks on Markus Söder and the museum “collapse completely” and were “campaign noise from the start”. Söder himself comes on Friday as a witness in the sub-committee.
The other report to which the opposition refers comes from the Nuremberg expert Eduard Paul. The three factions had already commissioned it in 2021. Paul also spoke to the press on Tuesday. He called the two new market analyzes “unusable”. Various assumptions, including that the very concept of a special property requires a higher rent, are “nonsense” and “simply nonsense”. Construction work in the tens of millions was also included in the justification of the rental price, which Schmelzer did not provide himself, but the Free State.
The criticized experts are invited to the U-Committee this Thursday. Verena Osgyan said they wanted to know what documents they had for their findings, so “don’t brand them as incompetent”. FDP man Körber also mentioned that one of the companies worked regularly as a brokerage house for the Free State and also for the CSU. In this regard, Volkmar Halbleib (SPD) reported in general about the “pressure situation” that he recognized among all the witnesses in the committee because of the Prime Minister’s involvement. Everyone thinks about what “consequences” a position on the matter could have.