• Home
  • Contact
  • Submit a News Releases
Thursday, May 26, 2022
  • Login
No Result
View All Result
NEWSLETTER
Mainland Times — Breaking Continental European News
  • Climate
  • Business
  • Economy
  • Europe
  • Health
  • Education
  • Society
  • Sport
  • World
  • Submit a News Releases
  • Climate
  • Business
  • Economy
  • Europe
  • Health
  • Education
  • Society
  • Sport
  • World
  • Submit a News Releases
No Result
View All Result
Mainland Times — Breaking Continental European News
No Result
View All Result
Home Europe

German parliament rejects mandatory coronavirus vaccination

Michael Sanders by Michael Sanders
04/08/2022
in Europe
German parliament rejects mandatory coronavirus vaccination
0
VIEWS

BERLIN — The German parliament on Thursday rejected a draft bill that would have made coronavirus vaccination compulsory from the age of 60 in a defeat for Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his attempt to build a cross-party consensus on the issue.

Of the 683 who voted on the bill, 378 rejected it and only 296 supported it, among them Scholz and Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, who looked visibly disappointed when the result was announced in the plenary.

The outcome came as a major blow to the governing coalition of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), who had been unable to find common ground even among their own ranks on the issue after months of debate.

Lauterbach, who — like Scholz — is a Social Democrat, until recently promoted a strict vaccine mandate for everyone over the age of 18, but failing to gather enough support to put forward such a motion, he eventually folded and got behind the next best strict idea, which also was the only actual draft bill on offer in parliament on Thursday.

“If no one had been vaccinated, we would now have a flawless catastrophe and would be in a complete lockdown — that must be understood,” Lauterbach insisted during the debate before the vote, reiterating his question whether Germans really want to get used to several hundred COVID deaths every day.

Scholz and Lauterbach got behind the proposal to require vaccination for over 60s after it became clear there would be no majority in the free vote to make vaccination mandatory for all adults. Even then the bill, which instead would have required adults below the age of 60 to at least consult their doctor about getting jabbed, fell through.

Although a far cry from his original idea, Lauterbach supported the compromise also because he has long been worried about the more than 2 million unvaccinated Germans over the age of 60 who are at higher risk of suffering bad cases of COVID-19 and could cause a collapse of the health care system if a new wave of infections arrives in the fall.

Due to his repeated warnings of those scenarios, the health minister has sometimes been accused of scare-mongering, particularly by FDP colleagues and opposition politicians.

Meanwhile, a less ambitious proposal by the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian allies from the CSU, with whom they form the largest opposition bloc in parliament, was rejected even more decisively, with only 172 votes in favor out of 678 in total.

Contentious issue

Thursday’s vote marked another unfortunate coronavirus milestone for Scholz and his governing coalition formed last November, given they have so far attracted almost only criticism over the issue, be it over apparent infighting or the chancellor’s refusal to take the helm on a vaccine mandate.

It was Scholz who first said the issue should be decided by MPs, leaving it to his health minister to convince enough lawmakers of the importance of a vaccine mandate.

Lauterbach, a popular but polarizing figure, unintentionally enlarged his group of critics earlier this week when he announced on a late-night talk show that he was abandoning a plan to lift compulsory isolation for people with COVID. The U-turn came two days after he had announced an end to isolation from May 1.

“Federal confusion minister,” one German newspaper called him Thursday morning.

Well aware that it was going to be close call in the vote, Scholz summoned Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock back to Berlin to try and tip the scale, forcing her to prematurely leave a summit of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.

But the move was to no avail — Thursday’s parliament debate only showed how little common ground there is among MPs when it comes to the vaccine mandate.

In what appeared to be a stereotypical German procedure, before they could even get to the vote, lawmakers had to vote on the order in which they wanted to vote on the various proposals put forward by different groups, including a complete rejection of mandatory vaccination by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Even Deputy Parliament President Aydan Özoğuz got exasperated during all the voting. “It would be quite appropriate if you didn’t eat in between the votes or go somewhere else,” she reprimanded.

“And would you please hurry up!”

This article is part of POLITICO Pro

The one-stop-shop solution for policy professionals fusing the depth of POLITICO journalism with the power of technology

Exclusive, breaking scoops and insights

Customized policy intelligence platform

A high-level public affairs network

WHY GO PRO LOG IN

Recommended

Music: Emerging Europe loses three of its finest musicians

Music: Emerging Europe loses three of its finest musicians

5 months ago
Poland defies EU once again: Emerging Europe this week

Poland defies EU once again: Emerging Europe this week

6 months ago

Popular News

  • Alvaris Pearce, a Russian photo model with political ambitions

    Alvaris Pearce, a Russian photo model with political ambitions

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Ukrainian Startup Promin Aerospace Secures a Launch Partner in Atlantis Spaceport Consortium 

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Medtech Ecosystem – access to the medicine of the future

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • California’s 2022-2023 budget includes US$380m to support long-duration energy storage projects

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Lewis Hamilton taking a break from ‘very toxic’ social media after Formula 1 world title hurt, says Briton’s brother

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0

Newsletter

Subscribe and receive the latest news to your email.

SUBSCRIBE

Category

  • Business
  • Climate
  • Economy
  • Education
  • Europe
  • Health
  • Society
  • Sport
  • World
  • Без рубрики

Site Links

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

About Us

Mainland Times is an independent online outlet that publishes socially relevant news taking place on the European continent. Mainland Times aggregates news from several sources, and also provides coverage through a network of local correspondents.

  • Home
  • Contact
  • Submit a News Releases

© 2021 All rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Europe
  • Economy
  • Health
  • Climate
  • Climate
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Education
  • Society
  • World
  • Submit a News Releases

© 2021 All rights reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In