Status: 02/14/2023 7:45 p.m
Interior Minister Faeser wants to reform disciplinary law in order to be able to remove extremist civil servants more quickly from public service in the future. The cabinet is scheduled to discuss the draft law on Wednesday.
In the future, it should be made easier for the federal government to dismiss anti-constitutional civil servants from the public service. As the Federal Ministry of the Interior announced, department head Nancy Faeser has presented a draft law to change disciplinary law. The Federal Cabinet is to discuss this on Wednesday. The aim of the law is to avoid lengthy disciplinary proceedings at the administrative court.
The draft envisages that authorities will in future be able to remove anti-constitutional officials from the service themselves by means of a disciplinary order. Faeser explained last month: “So far, the procedures have taken far too long. That’s why we’re changing the disciplinary law now and making sure that the authorities can act themselves and don’t have to contact the administrative court with a disciplinary complaint, as was previously the case.” Because if you reject the state, you cannot serve it.
Disciplinary procedures are to be significantly accelerated
The aim of the new regulation is to “remove enemies of the constitution from the public service more quickly than before in order to ensure the integrity of the public service,” the ministry said. The law should cause “a noticeable acceleration of all disciplinary proceedings”.
The draft law is before the “Handelsblatt”. It states that disciplinary proceedings to terminate a civil service relationship would currently take up to four years on average. “This is difficult to convey, especially in the case of extremist misconduct that particularly affects the trust of citizens in the integrity of the administration,” it said.
Baden-Württemberg as a role model
Accelerating the expulsion procedure would not only relieve the burden on the administration: since the civil servants concerned continued to receive a large part of their salaries during the disciplinary proceedings, which sometimes lasted for years, the new draft could help to stop paying extremists from the state coffers longer than necessary.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, it is based on a regulation that has been in force in Baden-Württemberg for several years. In the federal state, all disciplinary measures are ordered by an administrative act, i.e. a disciplinary order. The Federal Constitutional Court has already confirmed the admissibility of this regulation.
criticism from the union
The trade unions are less enthusiastic. The introduction of a disciplinary order for all disciplinary measures “does not meet the requirements of a formal, impartial procedure that ensures fairness,” said ver.di union secretary Christian Hoffmeister on the “Table Media” platform. It is not right to deprive civil servants of their fundamental rights through mere official decisions.