He Was Away for a (Short) While
On resignation as the metric of political accountability.
I. The event
In mid-July 2026 Jens Spahn gave up the chairmanship of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, under growing pressure including from his own ranks.
In early September it became known that he is to join the Budget Committee. According to reports citing party sources, he is to serve there as rapporteur for the budget of the Foreign Office. His parliamentary seat he had retained in any case.
Between resignation and return lie about six weeks.
II. What a resignation measures
Resignation is the metric of political accountability. It is the one visible quantity from which it is read off whether misconduct has consequences.
That makes it apt — and vulnerable.
Apt, because it is unambiguous. It can be counted, dated and reported. Unlike insight, restitution or a change of conduct, it is ascertainable from outside.
Vulnerable for the same reason. Where a single quantity decides whether responsibility has been taken, it suffices to serve that quantity.
And resignation from a parliamentary group chairmanship allows precisely that. The seat remains, the party remains, the relationships remain, the knowledge of procedure remains. What was given up is an office — and offices are redistributed regularly in any case.
After the resignation the metric looks as though something had happened. After the return it looks no different, for there is no metric for returning.
III. The difference is the commentary
Both are registered, and both remain documented. Whoever has built his life as a political career has his offices, mandates and committee memberships recorded in the official handbooks, in the members’ profiles and in every curriculum vitae. The return, too, was reported and criticised — this text would not otherwise exist.
The difference lies not in the record but in the appraisal.
The resignation was generally greeted with satisfaction. It counted as evidence that misconduct has consequences, and as a good sign for a functioning democracy — so one of his sharpest critics put it in July.
The return is registered. It is criticised by few, and it counts to nobody as evidence of anything.
And therein lies the difference between a record and a metric. A record holds fast what has happened. A metric is a record to which an appraisal is attached. For the resignation that appraisal exists — it counts as responsibility discharged. For the return it does not, because it is not envisaged that it takes anything back.
IV. The objection — and what remains of it
Of the criticisms voiced in these days, one deserves closer examination than the rest.
The judgement that someone lacks sufficient sense of responsibility in handling public money is an assessment. One may share it or not.
The charge of a conflict of interest would be something else — a finding about competences. Only in this case it does not carry as far as it is advanced.
For the Budget Committee deliberates the federal budget by individual plans, and for each plan there are rapporteurs. The rapporteurship for the Foreign Office budget concerns Plan 05. The mask procurements of 2020 and 2021 fall under the health budget, Plan 15 — a different area with different rapporteurs. To the Audit Subcommittee, which handles the findings of the Federal Court of Audit, he does not belong on the current state of things.
What remains is membership of the committee itself: in the end every member votes on the entire budget, and thus on Plan 15 as well. But that applies to all members equally and is no finding about any one person.
In its strong form the objection is thereby disposed of. Whoever nonetheless raises it would have to say which decision precisely is supposed to be affected.
V. The question that stays open regardless
Something else does remain standing, and it is more general than this case.
The principle that nobody should be judge in his own cause applies almost everywhere. Under municipal codes a council member may not take part where he is personally involved. In company law a supervisory board member must stand back in case of conflicting interests. Before a court a judge can be challenged.
For competences within Bundestag committees there is nothing comparable.
That is not the charge that something impermissible has happened here. It is the observation that the question is not asked at all — neither in this case nor in one where it would lie closer. Whether a rapporteur may adjudge matters in which he was himself involved is, procedurally, unregulated.
And the answer is open. It touches the freedom of the mandate and the self-organisation of the parliamentary groups, and neither is trivial.
VI. The counter-case
Four objections are to be taken seriously, and they genuinely are.
A parliamentary seat cannot be withdrawn. Members are elected and under the Basic Law are bound by no instructions. To demand that someone give up his seat after public criticism is to demand precisely what the constitution rules out.
Committee composition is a matter for the parliamentary groups. It follows their relative strength and their internal agreement. There is no procedure by which the public helps decide committee appointments, and arguably there should not be.
There is no judicial finding. Much has been reported and disputed about the mask procurements; a committee of inquiry has dealt with them, and the Federal Court of Audit has made findings. There is no criminal conviction. Whoever writes as though there were writes falsely.
And expertise is an argument. A former federal minister knows budget procedure from applying it. That experience is useful in a committee is no pretext but true.
These objections are sound, and together with the examination of competences above they explain why the appointment is not open to criticism.
VII. What follows
Not a judgement about a person. The mask procurements are to be adjudged elsewhere, and the proceedings are not concluded.
But two things about the procedure.
Resignation does not serve as a measure. It measures whether an office was given up, not whether anything has become different. As long as it remains the only visible quantity, it will be served rather than satisfied.
And the outrage misses the point. The loudly advanced charge of a conflict of interest does not carry in this case, as the examination of competences shows. The quieter question — why there is no rule for such cases at all — is not asked.
There is a reason for that too, and it is the same one: for a loud charge there is a metric. For a missing rule there is none.