1. Committee of inquiry of the 15th electoral term of the German Bundestag

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The 1st committee of inquiry of the 15th electoral term of the German Bundestag was requested on December 2, 2002 by the Bundestag faction of the CDU / CSU . It was appointed on December 20, 2002 and presented its final report on November 23, 2003 .

The committee, which was colloquially known as the Committee of Lies , dealt with the question of whether the Federal Government informed the Bundestag and the public in 2002 about the situation of the federal budget , the financial situation of the statutory health and pension insurance and compliance with the stability criteria of the EC Informed the contract incorrectly or incompletely before the federal election on September 22, 2002 .

In this regard, the committee came to the conclusion that the accusation could not be confirmed: " No evidence whatsoever could be found for the impression given by the opposition of electoral fraud " . (Final report p. 137)

In particular, the extent to which the federal government stayed within the forecast spectrum of the economic research institutes was examined when it assumed that there would be a significant economic recovery in the second half of 2002 . The range of forecasts by the economic research institutes in the summer of 2002 ranged from 0.6% growth ( German Institute for Economic Research ) to 1.2% ( Institute for World Economy ), the federal government expected 0.75%. In the months of August / September there was only one single first indication from science that the expected autumn upswing might not materialize.

The Federal Minister of Finance, Hans Eichel, justified himself that the Federal Government should not have put itself at the head of the pessimists because of a single warning signal . Without a reliable empirical basis, that would have been irresponsible. Statements by a finance minister are psychologically significant for the economy and can themselves become an economic factor. The evidence revealed that the decline in tax revenues to the extent that had occurred had not been foreseen by either the Federal Ministry of Finance or independent economic research institutes. When assessing the “ Maastricht deficit ”, the Federal Ministry of Finance was not alone in its assessment: the independent economic research institutes only recognized in October 2002 that the three percent deficit limit would not be adhered to. Only a single institute, the Institute for the World Economy, corrected its forecast to 3.1% a few days before the election.

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