It is now still a formality that Hamburg’s citizens Regular query at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution decides. Because on Thursday evening the Interior Committee voted in favor, with votes from the CDU, SPD and Greens – against the Left and AfD. An interface is then “armed” that connects the personnel office with the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV). Every applicant for a job with the city enters their name, date of birth and nationality and sees if there is a match.
Before this one “Regulation infrastructure” The DGB and an “alliance against professional bans” had urgently warned. This threatens to see a return of the radical decree from the 1970s. The SPD MPs and their Interior Senator Andy Grote forbade this comparison. The scale remains the same as before, said Grote. “The way we deal with the findings doesn’t change. But we check more systematically.”
Grote referred to an Islamist group whose around 300 members were compared with the data and promptly produced a “double-digit number” of city employees, three to four in one school alone. “This is an absolute red flag,” he said. Hamburg should not leave this to chance. “If the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution had not made this comparison, we would never have found out.” But it has.
At an expert hearing at the beginning of January Olaf Schwede from DGB-Nord criticized the draft law as “overshooting the mark”. The city has enough “effective instruments” with a recently tightened disciplinary law and a self-declaration that has now been introduced for new employees that they do not belong to any anti-constitutional group.
Grote fears that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution will be defamed
At the same time, it is not clear from the draft what information the Office for the Protection of the Constitution makes available and what those affected receive. “All of this increases the risk of deterring young people from getting involved, for example, in climate protection, peace or against right-wing extremism,” said Schwede. The left-wing MP Deniz Celik took up this and asked “whether sparrows aren’t being shot with cannons here”.
This angered Grote. The claim that masses of climate activists are now being targeted by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution defames its work. This is always a case-by-case decision. “There are also extremists who have the clear goal of being anchored in the climate protection movement.”
However, the Hamburg Jusos are now also worried about the effects of the rule query, who speak of a “historical wrong path”. It is particularly critical that the information for the review is taken from the nationwide central register “Nadis”. The new law obliges the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to forward all information to the personnel office, said Juso Jakob Lichtenberg. Since the AfD could soon rule in other countries, information from constitutional protection authorities that are “controlled by right-wing extremists” will have to be taken into account in the near future.
At the Expert hearing in January there was a protest against this “Public Service Protection Act“From a purely legal point of view, there are not many objections. The lawyer Sarah Geiger, invited by the Greens, reassured that the required “duty of loyalty under civil service law” does not exclude criticism of the government as long as it remains on the basis of the Basic Law and the Free Democratic Basic Order (FDGO).
However, she also suggested that the question be narrowed down as to what basic principles are involved in the review of constitutional fidelity. According to a decision by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2017, the guarantee of human dignity as well as the principles of democracy and the rule of law are important. It cannot be assumed that someone who criticizes the state-guaranteed right to property is questioning the FDGO, said Geiger. In other words: some criticism of capitalism must be allowed.
It’s a matter of individual cases, said the head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Torsten Voß. Someone could wear a T-shirt with the inscription “System Change” because they want green steel for climate protection – or because they want to overcome the entire system
Deniz Celik now asked Grote whether Geiger’s suggestion would be included in the draft law. He didn’t commit. This is a “legally defensible view”. However, this is not determined by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, but by the courts. It is not the Office for the Protection of the Constitution that decides whether findings are relevant, but rather the hiring office in coordination with the Human Resources Office. And he emphasized that every decision is “justiciable”, i.e. legally verifiable.
If there is a “hit”, the case is processed manually by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution Torsten Voß said that it could be that passing on certain information would make “access” to it more difficult. Then there is only an “authority certificate” that contains clues. For Deniz Celik, this also raises questions: “In order to defend yourself, you have to get all the information,” he said. With a view to concerned young people, Celik then wanted to know whether they would be recorded in the database if left-wing extremists also took part in a demo.
“It’s a matter of individual cases,” said Voß. Someone could wear a T-shirt with the inscription “System Change” because they want green steel for climate protection – or because they want to overcome the entire system. It’s also not the case that young people’s futures are being ruined. The data of those under 18 would only be stored for two years.
This did not reassure the Jusos, who had spoken to the senator before their press release. They fear a “de facto right of veto for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution” because the personnel office will hardly override their assessment. The SPD youth organization warned that civil rights concerns should be taken seriously and joined the “Hamburg alliance against professional bansThey are now planning another demo for March 21st because the law will probably be passed by the citizens on March 25th.