Vaccination campaign during a pandemic: Ministry of Health rejects criticism from the Court of Auditors

The Ministry of Health has rejected criticism from the Federal Audit Office of its practice when awarding contracts to an advertising agency and classifying documents as confidential classified information.

We “explicitly do not share” the Federal Audit Office’s assessment, said a ministry spokesman at the federal press conference in Berlin. The procurement and contractual requirements were met. “We have already explained this in detail in parliament in response to relevant inquiries.”

Has competition law been inadmissibly undermined?

The background is the awarding of the contract for the Corona vaccination campaign “I protect myself”. According to a report in “Welt”, from the perspective of the Federal Audit Office, everything indicates that the Ministry of Health itself commissioned the SPD election campaign agency BrinkertLück to do this. This means that competition law has been inadmissibly undermined. This approach would only have been legally correct if there was a clause in the framework agreement between the ministry and its then in-house agency Scholz & Friends that allowed the ministry to commission a subcontractor itself.

According to the report, when it comes to classifying documents as classified information, the Federal Audit Office stated that they should be limited to the necessary extent.

The ministry spokesman explained that the subcontracting of the BrinkertLück agency was done verbally with the framework contract agency Scholz & Friends. The requirements were therefore met.

In contrast, the Union’s health policy spokesman, Tino Sorge (CDU), told “Welt” that the allegations against Karl Lauterbach’s (SPD) ministry were serious. “Breaches of duty and attempts at cover-up characterize the awarding of the vaccination campaign by Lauterbach.”