Federal officials who are found to be extremist or anti-constitutional will face more rapid consequences in the future. The process for doing this is currently taking a long time. After the reform decided in the cabinet, the employer can impose disciplinary measures more easily.
It should be possible to remove extremists from their posts more quickly in the future. The federal cabinet passed a bill to reform disciplinary law. In particular, this should lead to the procedures becoming shorter, as the Federal Ministry of the Interior announced. The planned changes only affect federal civil servants.
The Federal Disciplinary Act is at the heart of the reform project. It already has "mechanisms to effectively punish extremist and anti-constitutional incidents," the interior ministry said. Such offenses usually lead to removal from the civil service. "However, these procedures often take several years." So far, the employer has had to enforce serious measures against the civil servants in court.
In the future, such measures should instead be able to be ordered directly in a so-called disciplinary order. According to the information, in addition to removal from service, this also applies to demotions and the withdrawal of pensions. At the same time, according to the ministry, the hurdles for removal from the civil service after a criminal conviction should be lowered.
"With our reform, enemies of the constitution can be removed from the public service much faster than before - in particular through accelerated proceedings and more consistent punishment for hate speech offenses," said Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser on the cabinet decision. "We will not allow our democratic constitutional state to be sabotaged from within by extremists."
Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said he wanted to emphasize that "the overwhelming majority of civil servants" stand firmly on the ground of the Basic Law. Violations of the civil service's duty of loyalty to the constitution or other serious breaches of duty occur "very, very rarely in relation to the total number of federal employees". But even if these are only isolated cases, "they damage the trust in the integrity of the public service in the long term," emphasized Hebestreit.
