20200503 Gesetze im Schnellverfahren - demokratische Kontrolle ausgehebelt

03.05.2020 Gesetze im Schnellverfahren - demokratische Kontrolle ausgehebelt

Human rights lawyer criticises restrictions on fundamental rights

Even legally completely clueless, we have noticed many restrictions on basic rights in recent weeks

Eberhard Schultz, co-founder of the Foundation for Social Human Rights and Participation, has now expressed his concern about the current restrictions on fundamental rights in a detailed and very interesting interview at Telepolis without denying a possible threat from the virus..

Alarmingly, this is much more comprehensive than commonly perceived, so it is important to read this interview in detail at the source. We only want to pick out a few points.

Let us start with a "positive" insight: the state is capable of acting. Eberhard Schultz states:

There is the astonishing process of creating legal regulations in the short term, which has been fended off for decades with the argument that it is impossible for the federal government to create legal regulations that fall within the competence of the federal states because of our federal system. Now, all of a sudden, it has been regulated at short notice together with the federal states that, for example, apartments can no longer simply be terminated by the landlord without notice, as was previously the case under the law, if two months' rent cannot be paid by the tenants. This shows what is possible if the Federal Government and the governments of the Länder take the matter seriously.

But this ability to act stops halfway, one could e.g. (if one wanted to)

To quarter homeless people in the empty hotels instead of letting them camp out in the open in danger and without observing distance regulations, because after all, Germany too recognised a binding social human right to housing for all in the UN Social Pact in 1966,
Introduce binding collective bargaining in the nursing and hospital sector with the necessary increases in income, instead of calling for evening clapping for the "heroes of work",
and many more (if we think of the necessary change in climate policy - Corona would be a "bird shit" even with one million dead compared to what a global climate catastrophe will cost in terms of victims, because already now 10,000 people are starving to death every day)

The negative side, the list of restrictions of fundamental rights, which already reminds of "emergency powers", is long

the presence and participation of the members of parliament in the Bundestag is reduced by the distance requirement to an "emergency parliament
political decisions are made via expert groups and video conferences, discussions become impossible
Freedom of assembly through bans on demonstrations (permit requirement instead of registration),
Residence prohibition orders against demonstrators violate the fundamental rights to freedom of action, freedom of movement and freedom of assembly,
Freedom of movement through contact bans and travel restrictions,
Protection of family and privacy through contact bans,
Right to education through online school with its social and technical limitations,
Right to informational self-determination through Corona Apps or data transfer of health data to unauthorised parties,
the legislative measures are taken in a fast-track procedure - without expert hearings and without politics, indeed without opposition,
the deployment of the military at home is constitutionally questionable, the Bundeswehr must not become a national security reserve at home
the concept of "Gefährder", more often a presumed Islamist, is extended to those who disregard restrictions and commandments,
the quarantine of these people should be monitored by technical means (apps or even leg irons),
the obligation to wear masks, a total reversal of the ban on concealment of past years, takes away the personality of the people and "switches on immediately",
People who are not allowed to wear masks for health reasons are discriminated against in public,
the distance requirement, which is so fiercely enforced in the "public" and by the police, is not monitored by the state at all in companies, masks are often not available, certainly not in the case of Eastern European contract workers, who not only come together closely at work, but also have to live in cramped 6- and 8-bed rooms,
there was a threat of compulsory labour measures, which are prohibited under Article 12(2) of the Basic Law,
certain professional groups such as doctors and nurses are threatened with restrictions on fundamental rights in occupational health and safety law and collective labour law. All three readings of the Bundestag on these issues took place on one day without debate, let alone a hearing of experts and participants.
...

For details please read the interview!

After all, in mid-April the Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) at least began to put a stop to the absolute bans on freedom of assembly and demanded that the individual case be examined..

Read more https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Coronakrise-Eine-bedrohliche-Entwicklung-fuer-die-Grundrechte-4713370.html
and the contribution to the debate of the Association of Democratic Lawyers in (VDJ) of 22.4.2020 under the heading "Democracy - and fundamental rights dismantling in the Corona crisis end! Constitutionally compliant health protection must be differentiated and related to risks".