Corona sequences: Committee gets blackened mask report

Minister of Health Nina Warken now wants to give a special report on mask procurement in the Corona crisis to the Bundestag – but with blackened passages. “I decided to disclose the report in the upcoming week of the meeting to the Bundestag’s budget committee,” said the CDU politician of the “Rheinische Post”. In the committee meeting on Wednesday, in addition to the minister, the invited ex-department head Jens Spahn (CDU) wants to put herself to the MPs.

Warken said that passages were blackened: “The report contains information that we have to protect.” This affects personal employee data, business secrets of affected companies and things that affect ongoing processes with suppliers. “I would rather publish the report completely today than tomorrow, but I simply can’t,” said the minister. The document is only intended for the MPs. “It remains classified as a closure. Unfortunately, more transparency is not possible.”

Billions of billions for the federal government

Specifically, it is about a report by the special investigator Margarethe Sudhof, which was still used by Warken’s predecessor Karl Lauterbach (SPD) in 2024. The ministry had initially announced that they should be presented with its own report, in the findings of Sudhof, but not the report as such. Greens, left and the SPD demanded more transparency.

The background is the procedure of department head Spahn at the beginning of the 2020 pandemic when masks were scarce. The ministry applied a procedure in which delivery contracts came about without further negotiations at fixed high prices. In many cases, the ministry later refused to pay and claimed quality deficiencies. Then suppliers complained. The federal government threatens the federal government from still smoldering legal disputes. Spahn, who is now Union faction leader, defended the procedure at the time.

The report is to be made available to the committee members in the run -up to the meeting, as a ministry spokeswoman said. An intensive examination of various options showed that this is now the only viable opportunity to meet the legitimate desire for transparency and education such as the responsibility of the ministry. Spahn had made it clear that he also did not know the report and was not asked about it.

Greens criticize blackening

The Green Housekeeper Paula Piechotte demanded that the report, which have been kept for a long time, had to go to the table immediately. “This is the only way to thoroughly examine it in front of the committee meeting and to classify it politically.” It is more than questionable whether a readable and usable version will be presented or only a largely blackened document.

Green health expert Janosch Dahmen demanded: “If you want to regain trust in democracy, you now have to ensure complete transparency-through the unsuccessful publication of the report and a serious parliamentary reappraisal.” Nobody expects infallibility in the crisis. “But everyone has the right to honesty, accountability and political consequences.”

The ministry explained that so far no companies had been asked whether they would release the text without blackening. A clarification of all positions would hardly have been possible until the committee meeting on Wednesday. In many places, company interests and process risks are also affected.