Germany has entered federal election mode – more than a year before polling day – with chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) floating controversial proposals it says will improve national security.
After recent violent attacks in Bavaria, and Islamic State-related raids yesterday in western Germany, federal interior minister Thomas de Maizière will today present the first of two sets of domestic security reforms. Among the ideas reportedly in the mix is relaxing medical confidentiality rules if a doctor believes a patient may be planning a violent attack against the state.
Clampdown
In a second package to be unveiled next week, Mr de Maizière and his CDU state interior minister colleagues will present proposals to ban burkas, expedite deportations of foreign national criminals and clamp down on dual citizenship. The party’s proposals also call for 15,000 additional police and extra investment in weapons and technical equipment, including video surveillance.
The Social Democrats (SPD), Dr Merkel’s junior coalition partner in Berlin, joined the opposition yesterday in dismissing the proposals as law-and-order electioneering ahead of state elections next month – and next year’s federal poll.
Doctors’ groups warned that changes to confidentiality rules risked undermining doctor-patient trust essential for effective treatment.
“Security will not be improved because there will be fewer people who go for treatment for their depressive disturbances,” said Rudolf Henke, head of the Marburger Bund, Germany’s doctor union.
German doctors’ oath of secrecy came under scrutiny last year after a Germanwings pilot, in psychotherapy and taking antidepressants, deliberately crashed a plane, killing 150 people.
A Munich teenager who shot nine people dead last month before killing himself was also in therapy and taking medication.
A spokesman for Mr de Maizière declined to go into detail about the leaked proposals. At a heated government press conference he declined to expand on the security threats posed by burkas, dual citizenship or doctor-patient secrecy.
Secrecy
A spokesman for Berlin’s health ministry said the oath of secrecy was “not sacrosanct in Germany and not untouchable”.
Existing rules in Germany allow a doctor to break their oath to their patient if a third person is at risk. The new proposals may expand that in cases of threats to national security. At present, officials say, doctors may face a dilemma: they are criminally culpable if they break their oath of silence to a patient about a planned terrorist attack, but also criminally culpable if they remain silent.
Leading CDU figures welcomed the proposals to be unveiled in the coming days, amid a continued high terror threat in Germany.
“This is about giving our security forces, already doing a good job, the tools to work even better,” said Armin Schuster, a senior CDU spokesman on domestic security.
He also welcomed yesterday’s raids and said a long- standing CDU concern over dual citizenship had resurfaced after a recent demonstration in Cologne in support of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan attracted 40,000 people, many with dual German and Turkish citizenship
“It made clear that we have tens of thousands of people in our country . . . who have German citizenship, for whatever reason, but who do not feel loyal to our country,” he said.
Even before the CDU presents its proposals, they were dismissed as electioneering by its SPD coalition partners. SPD deputy leader Ralf Stegner warned the CDU against tinkering with dual citizenship rules, agreed during the Gerhard Schröder administration, for “symbolic tests of political strength”.
Prevented attacks
The Left Party called the measures an “attack on civil society” that would not have prevented the recent series of attacks. Frank Tempel, a Left Party domestic affairs spokesman, said the proposals were about “pandering to the pub regulars”.
Meanwhile, Germany’s right- wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) welcomed the CDU proposals. Party MEP Beatrix von Storch noted on Twitter that her party’s political programme was “belatedly . . . coming now from CDU interior ministers”.
Sensing a grand coalition row brewing, a spokeswoman for Dr Merkel insisted yesterday there were no immediate plans in Berlin to implement many of the CDU measures, in particular to abolish dual citizenship.
“Domestic security is a common theme for the whole coalition,” she added, saying Berlin was “continually checking to see where room for improvement exists to improve the security of our citizens”.
