Protecting children from abuse should be the top priority in the constitutional State. But the Minister of Finance blocks a corresponding law.
Child protection cannot be negotiated Photo: Inderlied/Kirchner-Media
How much is a child's life worth? A lot, most people would say. Who would want to see it any other way? Every child should grow up safe, free from violence, with loving parents (or other people close to them) and should have enough education and time to play. To name just a few of the basic needs of the child.
Should all this be reflected in the laws? Also in this case most people would probably answer: Absolutely, after all, our children are worth a lot to us. In fact, the Federal Child Protection Law has existed since 2012. Its goal is to ensure “comprehensive improvements in the protection of children” and to intervene “in case of violations of child protection.” What is expressed here in phrases is expressed more concretely in other laws: corporal punishment has been prohibited in schools since 1973 (in the GDR since 1949), and since 2000 parents are no longer allowed to hit their children.
And then there is the so-called UBSKM law, which focuses on sexual violence against children. In 2022, around 15,500 cases of abuse were reported in Germany. The number of unreported cases is much higher; The World Health Organization assumes that one or two children per school class are affected. A law that deals more with these cases seems more than necessary. But this law does not exist.
Semáforo had already agreed to this in its coalition agreement. In a passage on page 99, the government is clearly committed to “child protection”: this involves prevention and prevalence research, child-friendly justice, reporting chains in cases of abuse and cross-border cooperation to resolve these cases, and financing phone calls. and online counseling. The law also seeks to permanently establish the office of the Independent Commissioner for Child Sexual Abuse Issues (UBSKM). The abuse commissioner, Kerstin Claus, must regularly report all this to the Bundestag.
But where is it?
But the law, which has been requested for years and is now on the shelf, is not even in parliamentary debate yet. Why not? Is it because the Ministry of Family Affairs, where the abuse center is located, is sitting on the sign like the little mole on its hill in the Czech cartoon series? Or because it may need to be significantly improved, which in turn takes time?
No. The first internal government vote on the bill took place in December 2023, without major objections. If everything goes according to plan and parliamentary practice, the law could appear in the gazette in 2025 and the protection of children would be clearly regulated in matters of sexual violence. But it's not like that. Because the owner of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Christian Lindner, is blocking the bill.
Because? The reason cannot be that the coffers are empty; The costs of the law are, as they say in political jargon, counter-financed. In the current budget of the ecological Family Ministry, the “abuse agency” costs 11.7 million euros, less than 0.1 percent of even a relatively small family budget. The costs of the law are already included there. This amount is unlikely to change over the next year. In total, the Ministry of Family Affairs receives just under 3 percent of the federal budget. For comparison: around 11 percent of budget spending is planned for the FDP-led Ministry of Transport and just under 37 percent for the SPD-led Ministry of Labor.
pretty good enemies
However, discrepancies between the finance and family ministries are not new. Family Minister Lisa Paus and Finance Minister Christian Lindner have argued for weeks about basic child welfare, which aims to ease the burden on low-income families.
The basic child welfare project, Paus's favorite, started with a bang, but ended with a compromise after public disagreements between the two ministers: Paus entered the scene with a demand for 12 billion euros, Lindner responded with 2 billion euros . After sometimes embarrassing exchanges of blows and several negotiations behind closed doors, an agreement was reached for 2.4 billion euros.
Lindner likes to act as a saver, and the FDP is basically the blocking party at the traffic lights: the supply chain law, the animal welfare tax, compulsory service and, most recently, the promotion law are being considered. democracy. The best feud with the Family Minister still seems to be something special. Why else does the FDP man refuse to commit to a law that finds support even among his closest party and his ministerial colleagues? Both Justice Minister Marco Buschmann and Transport Minister Volker Wissing, both from the FDP, support the UBSKM law.
Lindner often acts as a saver, but the conflict with the family minister seems to be something special.
Unlike the UBSKM law, the “Center for Safe Sport”, created in the wake of debates on physical, psychological and sexual violence in sport, is not on shaky ground. It is planned to take the first steps at the end of 2024 and enter normal operation in 2026, will cost 6 million euros per year and will employ 46 full-time employees. The center is located in the Ministry of the Interior.
There is no doubt, the center is important. But equally important is the law, which promotes the process of fighting sexual violence both in the family and in organizations such as churches, homes, holiday camps and provides better support to victims, in all situations. This should at least be worth to the Minister of Finance the small sum that he has so far vetoed.