Ursula Nonnemacher on her dismissal: “I don’t regret it”

Ms. Nonnemacher, on Friday morning there was a scandal in the Federal Council, you were right in the middle of it: Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke handed you your discharge certificate there. What were you thinking at that moment?
I had expected that there could be a scandal today. But I only found out about a possible layoff this morning. Before the Federal Council meeting, we in the Brandenburg government always have a voting session. This morning all points were agreed there, only there was a conflict regarding the hospital law.

Which one?
Yesterday the State Chancellery signaled to me that Mr. Woidke wanted to vote to refer the hospital reform of his SPD party colleague, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, to the mediation committee. But that would clearly have violated the coalition agreement. It says: If we do not reach an agreement in the state government, we will vote with abstention in the Federal Council. And I was clearly against the mediation committee in the matter.

Mr. Woidke has already ignored disagreements in the state government – at cannabis-Law. Here too he voted for the mediation committee, even though you were against it.
Yes, this should now be another breach of the agreement with the hospital reform. But this time I said: I have registered a speech in the Federal Council and I will give it. I will explain the position of the responsible ministry, my ministry. This morning on the way to the Federal Council I found out that I was to be fired.

Why did you still go to the meeting?
At that moment I thought to myself: I’ll go there now and take part. I will not leave until I receive an official discharge certificate. And that’s how it happened.

If you had still been in the room during the decisive vote: would you have voted against Woidke in the open?
Yes. I was fired so that I can no longer present my opinion in the Federal Council. And so that I don’t endanger Brandenburg’s vote with “Yes for the Mediation Committee”. If I had voted against it, but Woidke had voted for it, Brandenburg’s vote would have been invalid.

In the end, the opponents of the reform did not get a majority. The project is not referred to the mediation committee; the reform has been decided. So did Dietmar Woidke fire you for absolutely nothing?
You can say that. I don’t want to idealize hospital reform at all. But you can work with the result as it is now. It would have been much more damaging to throw this whole process into the trash now. I believe from the bottom of my heart that the Federal Republic needs to get out of its reform backlog.

How much does Woidke’s actions have to do with the fact that he wants to ingratiate himself with the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance? He currently wants to conclude a coalition with him.
This is of course speculative, but I suspect that it has a lot to do with it. The Sahra Wagenknecht alliance has its sights set on the federal election; in Saxony, the ongoing explorations have been practically canceled; in Brandenburg, the coalition agreement is about to be signed. It is in the BSW’s interest to take an oppositional stance with a view to the federal election and the BSW has always opposed Lauterbach’s far-reaching reforms – according to the motto: We want to defend the status quo. I assume that this was an important guideline for the Prime Minister not to endanger the coalition agreement in the last few meters before the goal.

How are you feeling about your early release?
I am at peace with myself. For two years, as state minister, I was the one who fought many a dispute with Federal Health Minister Lauterbach, but also with my own parliamentary group, the Greens. My approach has always been to bring about improvements for the patients, especially here in East Germany with its very sparsely populated regions. That is my claim and my obligation. I complied with that. That’s why I decided the way I decided today. I don’t regret that.