Visa Investigation Committee

The Visa Committee of Inquiry (officially: 2nd Committee of Inquiry of the 15th electoral term of the German Bundestag ) investigated the causes of the abuse in the issuing of visas in connection with the visa affair . The chairman was the CSU member Hans-Peter Uhl , the deputy chairman was Volker Neumann , SPD .

On April 21, 2005, a meeting of the committee was televised live for the first time in the history of the German Bundestag.

Overview

On January 20, 2005 the first meeting of a committee of inquiry of the German Bundestag (initiated by the CDU / CSU parliamentary group) took place on the subject. On April 25, 2005, Federal Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer testified before the Visa Committee. CDU chairman was Jürgen Gehb . After Gehb was appointed to the office of legal policy spokesman, he was followed by Eckart von Klaeden , who faced Joschka Fischer once before in the Bundestag's question time in 2001. At that time it was about Fischer's role in the student movement in Frankfurt am Main in the early 1970s .

On February 12, 2005, Ludger Volmer resigned as foreign policy spokesman for the Greens parliamentary group and his seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He also let his work at Synthesis GmbH rest. He had been accused of corruption in connection with unresolved payments by the Bundesdruckerei , which earned on the passports.

According to Volmer, the decree, known by Volmer's name - Federal Minister Fischer also called the decree - was approved by members of all parties and three parliamentary committees ( Human Rights Committee , Petitions Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee ). According to Volmer, the decree was motivated by grievances, for example the refusal of a visa for a patient who had to undergo surgery on a brain tumor in Germany. Important for the progress were next to this decree two older decrees of 1999 (Decree of 2 September 1999 and the Plurez decree of 15 October 1999) and other circulars for travel insurance, which even under the Kohl government by ministers Kanther and Kinkel on were brought the way. In particular, these parts, on which the new decree was based, were then - according to the German Foreign Office - abused on a massive scale. Restricting freedom of travel by denying visas would have caused greater damage than the damage caused by misused visas.

The questioning time of the individual parties in the committee was based on the " Berlin Hour " (62 minutes), after which the speaking time for the individual parliamentary groups is determined based on the strength of the federal parties: the Union had 24 minutes, the SPD 21 minutes The Greens eleven and the FDP six minutes of questioning time.

Media coverage

For the first time in the parliamentary history of the German Bundestag, meetings of a committee of inquiry since April 21, 2005, inter alia with the questioning of Federal Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and former Minister of State. D. Ludger Volmer and the UN Ambassador and former State Secretary Günter Pleuger (both April 21).

Parliamentary television made the broadcast available to the television stations free of charge. The ARD and ZDF documentation channel , Phoenix , broadcast the session live continuously, the news channels N24 and n-tv intermittently.

The premiere was successful for the news and documentation channels. At Phoenix, an average of 230,000 viewers saw the 14-hour broadcast on Friday, the ARD and ZDF documentary channel achieved good ratings with a 1.6% market share (annual average 0.5 to 0.6%) , and n-tv also showed up 160,000 viewers and 3.0% market share (otherwise around 0.5%) at the time of the commission of inquiry broadcast of Vollmer's survey, as is N24.

The news channels recorded even better ratings on Monday when Foreign Minister Fischer was questioned. Phoenix posted a record rate. Above all, the broadcaster benefits from the fact that the main broadcasters ARD, ZDF, Sat.1 and RTL do not broadcast . The news channels and the documentary channel broadcast exclusively from the committee. At Phoenix, the broadcast reached an average market share of 4% and an average of 400,000 viewers between 8:59 a.m. and 11:07 p.m. From 9:59 a.m. to 2:23 p.m., the public broadcaster achieved an average of 700,000 viewers and a market share of almost 10%. A total of around six million viewers switched on the broadcast at least temporarily during the day.

Organ dispute due to the end of the taking of evidence

On June 2, 2005, the red-green majority in the committee ended the taking of evidence with reference to lack of time for procedural reasons. In accordance with Section 33 (3) of the Investigation Committee Act , the committee must prepare a status report if it is foreseeable that it will not be able to complete its investigation before the end of the electoral term. Because of the planned early election of the Bundestag, this is the case.

The CDU / CSU and FDP announced that they would appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court about the interruption of the taking of evidence , as they see their minority rights violated - Section 17 (2) PUAG. According to this, the minority quorum of a quarter of the committee members determines the course of the taking of evidence. With the setting v. a. the planned hearings of Chancellery Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Interior Minister Otto Schily do not take place, which the committee minority describes as a politically motivated goal of this end of the collection of evidence. If there are no new elections, the taking of evidence must be resumed.

With a decision of June 15, 2005, the Federal Constitutional Court confirmed the position of the committee minority and issued the provisional order in accordance with Section 32 BVerfGG that the taking of evidence was to be continued as long as the Federal President had not issued an order to dissolve parliament and determine new elections.

Members

Deputy

SPD

Detlef Dzembritzki , Jelena Hoffmann , Rolf Kramer , Johannes Andreas Pflug , Gerold Reichenbach , Rüdiger Veit

CDU

Ute Granold , Claudia Nolte , Rita Pawelski , Ole Schröder , Matthias Sehling

Alliance 90 / The Greens

Rainder Steenblock

FDP

Max Stadler

Final report

On August 30, 2005, the final report of the committee of inquiry was sent to the Bundestag for information. The final assessment by the Committee of Inquiry is 10 pages (pages 295–304). There is also a 24-page special vote by the parliamentary groups of the CDU / CSU and FDP (pages 305-318) and a four-page reply by the committee majority to the special vote (pages 319-322)

Web links

Investigation Committee Act (PUAG) ( BGBl. 2001 I p. 1142 )
Major inquiry from the CDU / CSU with response from the federal government - PDF document (172 kB)
Union requests committee of inquiry 'Visa crime', November 10, 2004 ( Memento of September 7, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) - CDU / CSU parliamentary group
Visa inquiry committee - what is it about? Allegations and responses. ( Memento of March 6, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) - Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group
"Organized crime" The Visa affair, November 2004 ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) - R-Archiv
Committee of Inquiry Dictionary - www.faz.net
Record of the testimony of Otto Schily , Joschka Fischer and Ludger Volmer in the video archive of the parliamentary television of the German Bundestag

Individual evidence

↑ Press release of the Federal Constitutional Court No. 51/2005 of June 15, 2005 ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
^ Final report of the Visa Committee of Inquiry (Drucksache 15/5975). (PDF, 488 pages, 2.8 MB) In: dipbt.bundestag.de. September 2, 2005, accessed November 7, 2019 .

[1] Press release of the Federal Constitutional Court No. 51/2005 of June 15, 2005 ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

[2] Final report of the Visa Committee of Inquiry (Drucksache 15/5975). (PDF, 488 pages, 2.8 MB) In: dipbt.bundestag.de. September 2, 2005, accessed November 7, 2019 .