An internal document fuels the suspicion that problems in the billion-euro construction project were kept secret so as not to jeopardize the CSU’s electoral chances. However, the prime minister sees the problem elsewhere.
Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) has largely avoided inquiries about an explosive memo on the second Munich S-Bahn tube. In the Munich Press Club on Monday, he only said that it was “a highly questionable development” that internal state government documents were leaked to the media. At the end of the investigative committee on the second regular route in the state parliament, one would “assess all of it”. As an SZ research recently showed, the responsible department in Söder’s state chancellery advised in that note from December 2020 that the billion-euro construction project should be treated “dilatory”, i.e. postponed, which was already threatened with years of delays and enormous cost increases. This was “not a winning topic in the election campaign,” wrote the department. At that time it was the federal election year, in which Söder reached for the Union’s chancellor candidacy.
Did the state government hide what it knew at the time about the problems that were looming when the second trunk line was being built, so as not to reduce the CSU’s electoral chances in the Munich region? Söder countered the accusation that information had been withheld on Monday. “You can only say something about the results when they are available,” said the Prime Minister, referring to the statement by Bahn boss Richard Lutz, who was still unable to give any final figures on the duration and costs of the project in July 2022. That is why the state government’s procedure is “simply correct,” said Söder.
The fact is, however, that the then Transport Minister Kerstin Schreyer (CSU) informed the Prime Minister on June 26, 2020 about the “predicted commissioning of the 2nd S-Bahn trunk line at the end of 2033”, instead of 2028 as planned until then. On October 9, 2020, the Ministry then informed the State Chancellery about a foreseeable postponement until 2034 and expected additional costs in the billions. This is what it says in a chronicle that the new Minister of Transport, Christian Bernreiter (CSU), submitted to the state parliament last autumn under pressure from the opposition. The investigative committee for the second trunk route began its work at the end of January.