Düsseldorf’s Parliamentary Investigation Committee Concludes Inquiry into 2021 Floods
Four years after the devastating floods in North Rhine-Westphalia, the Parliamentary Investigation Commission in the Düsseldorf State Parliament is nearing its conclusion. The final witness scheduled for Friday is Minister of Construction and Municipal Affairs Ina Scharrenbach (CDU).
"The final report on the 2021 flood disaster is expected to be completed by the summer break," said René Schneider, SPD spokesman in the committee. A draft of approximately 450 pages is already available.
This is the second flood investigation committee, and it was originally planned to conclude in 2023, according to Schneider. The first committee commenced its work in October 2021 during the previous legislative period. It was reestablished after the 2022 state elections.
The delay in concluding the inquiry can be attributed to a dispute over documents with Minister Scharrenbach. The opposition took the case to the NRW Constitutional Court after the minister initially provided the committee with only 10 pages of documents. These related solely to the three days of heavy rain in July 2021, which claimed 49 lives in NRW alone and caused damages estimated at 13 billion euros. The legal action proved successful, and the ministry subsequently provided the committee with an additional 425,000 pages.
However, the opposition believes that the documentation is still incomplete. "There are still documents missing," said Schneider. The SPD, however, is not pursuing the matter further, as it would necessitate another appeal to the Constitutional Court. "And honestly, it would be impossible to convey that to the public," added Schneider. "So, we are refraining from filing a further complaint." The SPD is now "the last faction on the committee that still has questions."
The SPD suspects that Scharrenbach conducted some official business using a private email address and via SMS. The parliament does not have appropriate access to these records. Schneider pointed out that in Rhineland-Palatinate, which was also heavily affected by the floods, then-SPD Prime Minister Malu Dreyer disclosed all her SMS communications at the time.
"When communicating via private channels such as WhatsApp or email, every chat history and every message can be deleted," said Schneider. "That’s tantamount to shredding documents." The SPD believes the lesson to be learned from this and other ongoing investigations is that this must be prevented in the future.
The investigation committee has already claimed one political casualty: the then Minister of the Environment Ursula Heinen-Esser (CDU) resigned a few weeks before the 2022 NRW elections over her holiday on Mallorca during the flood disaster.
