North Rhine-Westphalia’s local minister Ina Scharrenbach (CDU) does not allow herself to be summoned to the state parliament’s flood investigation committee at short notice. The panel then canceled its special meeting scheduled for this Tuesday. The SPD parliamentary group in the Düsseldorf state parliament had originally applied for it because Scharrenbach “demonstrably withheld files” from the opposition’s point of view.
On Monday, the minister countered in a letter to the committee chairman Sven Wolf (SPD) that of course she would provide the necessary documents in full and transparently. “For this purpose, my house already provided the committee of inquiry with documents totaling almost 5,700 pages during the last legislative period.” If there were any findings that documents relevant to the investigation were missing, her ministry would examine a corresponding compilation. The CDU politician also justified her rejection with the Tuesday cabinet meeting.
Scharrenbach’s ministry only gave the committee “ten papers” on the complex issue – and late at that, criticized SPD chairman René Schneider. “Minister Scharrenbach refuses to clarify,” he commented on her rejection. This is a “low point in the minister’s disastrous communication”. The SPD saw this as disregard for parliament. Schneider demanded that the ministry immediately release all documents related to the flood disaster.
The spokesman for the CDU parliamentary group in the committee, Thomas Schnelle, sees the SPD’s initiative as “a political show event”. The “staging of outrage cannot be explained” in any other way. The suffering of the flood victims forbids the committee “for partisan games” to be appropriated.
The heavy rain and the flood on 14./15. July 2021 was the worst natural disaster in the history of North Rhine-Westphalia. In the flood of the century, 49 people died in NRW alone. Tens of thousands of people in around 180 communities were affected.
At the beginning of the new electoral period, the Düsseldorf state parliament relaunched the committee of inquiry into possible mistakes and lessons that had already been running. Scharrenbach’s ministry was responsible for the reconstruction.
A year ago, the minister had to comment on the accusation in the committee that she had not provided all the documents even then. Scharrenbach had stated that the committee had everything that related to the subject of the investigation, but no documents on pure financing issues. SMS delete them regularly because of the large volume.
Agenda U-Committee Communication of the SPD
