Pandemic | Mask scandal: Spahn plays the persecuted innocent

The CDU/CSU parties must have known why they chose Nina Warken, a member of the Bundestag who was completely inexperienced in government, as Minister of Health. Her predecessor, Jens Spahn, who held the office from 2018 to 2021, is now catching up with his mask deals during the coronavirus pandemic . However, the current CDU/CSU parliamentary group leader believes that everything revealed in a report by special investigator Margaretha Sudhof (SPD), which was previously kept under wraps but has now been partially leaked to the media, does not significantly burden him. He reiterated this on Sunday evening on ARD. Referring to the recently released excerpts, he spoke of "subjective assessments of a single person." He stated that he had not been interviewed by her and was not familiar with the report.

Last week, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR, and WDR already quoted from the report, which Sudhof had prepared on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) and which has been available there since January. The lawyer, who served as State Secretary in three federal ministries, investigated how the federal government's chaotic mask procurement in 2020 came about, which will likely cost taxpayers more than three billion euros, and what role the current CDU/CSU parliamentary group leader played in all of this.

The research network has now received further parts of the report. Sudhof harshly criticizes Spahn in it. According to the report, a "lack of economic understanding" and "political ambition" led to the mask procurement under his aegis being carried out not as "Team State" but as "Team Me." The then Minister of Health acted in many respects on his own initiative and "demonstrably against the advice of his specialist departments." These departments had advocated for the acquisition to be coordinated by the Ministry of the Interior, as the Corona Crisis Team had decided on March 5, 2020. Spahn, however, decided "to handle the procurement alone" – and ordered that the Federal Ministry of Health take over the task itself.

Spahn reiterated on ARD that at the beginning of the pandemic, no one knew exactly what was happening. Protective equipment was in short supply in hospitals. Therefore, the federal government decided not to procure it "under public procurement law." The federal procurement offices in the Interior and Defense Ministries had not received masks through the "conventional route." Then the cabinet decided that the Health Ministry should procure them. The CDU politician advocated for the rapid establishment of a Bundestag inquiry commission to review the pandemic period, "ideally" before the summer recess.

The main accusation against Spahn is that he awarded the contract for the procurement and distribution of masks to a company from his Westphalian constituency, Fiege, "without competitive bidding." Last week, the former minister referred to "a crisis of the century and an exceptional situation." "There was a shortage of everything. Everything was in short supply. Everyone said: Get it, whatever the cost," he said on the "Table.Today" podcast. Given this, he naturally "first talked to people I knew in the emergency to ask who could help." A tendering process of three or six months would have taken far too long in the current situation.

Last week, the Greens and the Left Party demanded that the Bundestag receive the Sudhof report in its entirety. The chair of the Health Committee, Tanja Machalet (SPD), also demanded this. Health Minister Warken had announced that she would only make "information from the report" available to Parliament. "Of course, we will report our findings on mask purchases to the Budget Committee," she declared. The CDU politician also emphasized that Sudhof's findings should have already been submitted to Parliament under her predecessor, Karl Lauterbach, who appointed the special investigator.

On Friday, Lauterbach wrote on X that he was in favor of publishing the report in its "original version." He admitted that he had not published the report "during the critical phase of the election campaign or during my acting time as minister."

The Left Party had sharply criticized the government's and Spahn's handling of the report. The party's chairwoman, Ines Schwerdtner, also reminded the media on Monday in Berlin that it wasn't just about Spahn's actions. "We all remember well: It's about a network. I don't want to call it CDU clan crime, but it's heading in that direction. It's at least about a CDU network." Last week, she called for the establishment of a committee of inquiry to clarify how the "dirty deals" came about.