German Bundestag, July 4, 2024, Plenarprotokoll 20/181, pp. 23593-23594.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
It is, so to say, the Shakespeare of the AfD who now again has the word. A pleasant good evening, I wish you. Yet an exciting point is on the daily order for today’s debate. It is a high point, and a high point of every Berlin trip – this goes for the guests in the gallery – when one can occupy oneself at 2240 with the professional law of the registered professions – notaries, attorneys-at-law, patent attorneys and the tax consultants. Thus it crowns each day.
Jürgen Coße
(SPD): 2236!
2240, I said. It is 2236. You can still read the numbers, in contrast to me. That distinguishes you, and you are with the SPD. Congratulations that it functions!
Thus, it is about allowing possibilities, which there were during Corona; for example, of being able to hold principal proceedings [Hauptverhandlungen] in hybrid or virtual form. Do you now continue to count, or can I continue talking?
Jürgen Coße
(SPD): I’m listening, even if it’s difficult.
Okay. Or, there is the possibility to continue mail-in voting or also to bringing about decisions by means of the post office. That, we find quite good. I say, there can be nothing against that.
Nevertheless, we look critically upon the possibility of conducting virtual or hybrid association assemblies [Kammerversammlungen]. It is also undemocratic in regards associations if they can or must be held exclusively. As a result, we therefore reject that. In regards the conduct of the assembly, the flexibility should indeed be strengthened, and be given the possibility to lower the threshold of being able to participate; in the lived, German practice – you all know the construction of our networks – those affected may expect all possible forms of technical imponderabilities which can and will make impossible the orderly conduct of assemblies. You all know of software problems, connection and network problems, to the point of a complete break of connection. All is conceivable in Germany. Everyone knows that who more or less regularly takes part in such on-line conversations.
It should not remain unmentioned that you – God be thanked – have turned a corner concerning the originally planned possibility to scour without cause attorneys’ escrow accounts and so be able to massively encroach upon attorney privilege [Mandatsgeheimnis].
Otto Fricke (FDP): Collective accounts, Herr colleague!
Jürgen Coße
(SPD): Otto, he’s not familiar with that!
It would have been a systemic break. There would have been considerably more administrative expense. It’s therefore nice that you in the last meters have managed to eliminate that from the law.
All in all: You now previously from here have heard a comprehensive, Shakespearean weighing of the pros and cons of this law.
Marianne
Schieder (SPD): I believe you have never read Shakespeare.
We have wrestled with it, we have debated, and as a result come to the view: We unfortunately cannot vote in favor. That will not prevent this law, it also should not; we will with absolute vigor abstain.
I thus for the AfD delegation dispatch or release, on a nice evening, you and the guests above in the gallery into the Berlin nightlife.
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
