Bettina Stark-Watzinger: Bundestag is again discussing the funding affair – politics

If Bettina Stark-Watzinger has her way, there shouldn’t have been a debate on Thursday. The Federal Minister of Education has repeatedly emphasized in recent weeks that her ministry has “created comprehensive transparency” about the so-called funding affair. The members of the Union parliamentary group saw it differently – and invited the Education Minister to the debate in the Bundestag after a major question that was answered rather sparsely. “We tried to raise awareness, but you systematically thwarted it,” said Thomas Jarzombek, education policy spokesman for the Union parliamentary group, in the plenary session on Thursday.

Stark-Watzinger has been struggling with her funding affair since June. This is about how your ministry dealt with an open letter in which scientists criticized the evacuation of a pro-Palestinian protest camp at the Free University of Berlin. Stark-Watzinger’s house was supposed to check whether funding could be withdrawn from the signatory scientists. This contradicts “not only academic freedom, but also the spirit of the principles of free societies,” said Oliver Kaczmarek, education policy spokesman for the SPD on Thursday.

State Secretary Sabine Döring is still not allowed to comment

Since the allegations have been made, Stark-Watzinger has had to comment on them again and again, in the government survey in the Bundestag, in the Federal Education Committee, and in a small question from the Union faction. She repeatedly emphasized that she only found out about the events in her ministry from the media, that she did not initiate a corresponding investigation and that she did not know about it. In June, Stark-Watzinger fired her state secretary Sabine Döring, who is said to have issued the order out of a misunderstanding but then immediately stopped it.

Critics see Sabine Döring as a pawn sacrifice. Leaks of internal chat messages, which have since become public, at least sow doubts about the ministry’s representations. For example, they suggest that Sabine Döring sent an email to the ministry’s employees in which she admitted her responsibility for the audit order, which she did not formulate entirely voluntarily. “If everything that was published is true, then Professor Döring was pressured to write this email before she was fired,” CDU MP Jarzombek accused Stark-Watzinger on Thursday.

Stark-Watzinger himself did not speak up

Sabine Döring is not yet allowed to comment on the matter because the ministry has not released her from her duty of confidentiality. The Minden Administrative Court rejected an urgent application in which she requested to be allowed to speak. The court also stated in its decision that the press release that the ministry sent out after her dismissal did not show that Döring actually initiated the funding review.

Stark-Watzinger repeatedly contradicted herself in her statements about the funding affair, said Left MP Nicole Gohlke on Thursday. “You banned an official who contradicted you from speaking.” You initially wanted to prevent the release of files and then only released blacked out, unusable files. You are doing the opposite of what you as the FDP want to stand for.” FDP MP Ria Schröder jumped to the side of her party colleague, saying that the allegations against the minister were being exaggerated and that it was a “personal vendetta” by the opposition.

Bettina Stark-Watzinger herself sat in the plenary hall during the debate on Thursday, but did not speak. “The bottom line is that crisis communication can sometimes make things bigger in the end,” said SPD MP Kaczmarek in his speech in her direction.