Stuttgart / Berlin (dpa) – The CDU member of the Bundestag Joachim Pfeiffer has resigned his office as energy and economic policy spokesman for the Union parliamentary group and announced his withdrawal from parliament. “In the upcoming election to the German Bundestag in September of this year, I will not run again. I will return the nomination that has already been made in the constituency, ”said a statement by the 53-year-old on Saturday, which the German press agency has received.
Pfeiffer justified the decision with a highly criminal hacker attack on himself and his contractual partners, but also with the code of conduct that the Union parliamentary group wants to adopt in response to the mask scandal. He supported the tightening of the transparency rules, but the planned code of conduct would practically rule out entrepreneurial activities in addition to the mandate for management positions in the parliamentary group. “This nullifies the free mandate,” explained Pfeiffer.
First of all, the “Welt am Sonntag” reported on the MP’s withdrawal. According to their information, hackers had released confidential financial data related to Pfeiffer’s company holdings. The Waiblingen member of the Bundestag was recently criticized for alleged conflicts of interest.
“For three weeks now I have had to defend myself against a campaign in which sections of the press have made fabricated claims that I have linked my political mandate to business activities in addition to the mandate in an unlawful way. These are wrong and have been refuted, ”says Pfeiffer’s statement. He submitted the facts to the Bundestag administration for a final assessment. “I have to and can deal with that.”
With the hacker attack, however, a new dimension has been reached. “In a way that I could never imagine, my constitutionally protected personal rights and those of my contractual partners were violated with the greatest criminal energy.” The Federal Office for Information Security, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the State Criminal Police Office in Baden-Württemberg were involved.
“The unreasonable, highly criminal actions and the faction-internal restriction of my independence as a member of the Bundestag bring me to a fork in the road,” writes Pfeiffer. Therefore, with a heavy heart, he will resign from his position as energy and economic policy spokesman for the CDU / CSU parliamentary group and no longer run in the general election.
With the stricter transparency rules, the Union and the SPD want to draw conclusions from several cases of suspected corruption among MPs who have since left the CDU / CSU parliamentary group. In addition, the leadership of the Union parliamentary group is planning a code of conduct that would only apply to its own MPs.
With Pfeiffer’s resignation as energy policy spokesman, the way seems to be clear for further negotiations with the SPD on reforming the Renewable Energy Sources Act. Union and SPD actually wanted to present a concept by the end of March for the further expansion of green electricity from wind and sun and for financing the energy transition, against the background of higher EU climate targets. However, the SPD had put the negotiations on hold because of lobbying allegations against Union MPs. Pfeiffer was one of the Union’s negotiators in the EEG reform.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210410-99-154745 / 3
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