Allegations of plagiarism against traffic senator Manja Schreiner: CDU has to decide on further steps

Allegations of plagiarism against traffic senator Manja Schreiner: CDU has to decide on further steps

Plagiatic allegations against CDU politician Manja Schreiner

The allegations of plagiarism against Berlin traffic senator Manja Schreiner cause unrest in politics. The CDU, as the strongest force in the Berlin House of Representatives, will have to decide on how to proceed. Schreiner himself has announced that it will no longer lead your doctorate and have your doctoral thesis checked.

Manja Schreiner studied law in Rostock from 1996 to 2001 and then completed a master's degree in international and European commercial law. In 2005 she received his doctorate with the topic of "employee consideration in takeover law". At the time of her doctoral thesis, she was 29 years old and worked as a legal at a cruise company before moving to Berlin. She has been a member of the Pankower CDU since 2012 and state vice since 2019. She was appointed senator three and a half months ago.

Plagiats hunters have found several dozen text passages in Schreiner's work on the Vroniplag Wiki portal. The Greens see the allegations as substantial and require a complete clarification of Schreiner itself. However, it has hardly any opportunities to actively contribute to clarification until the test result is announced.

The Schreiner case is also important for the entire Berlin Senate, since it is already the third case in which a reigning member of the government gets criticized because of a questionable doctoral thesis. The two previous cases concerned the head of the Senate Chancellery, Florian Graf, in 2012 and the Senator for Economic Affairs Franziska Giffey in 2021. Both had to settle their titles. However, the processing of the allegations against Schreiner will differ from the previous cases, since it is not part of the CDU parliamentary group and is also not available. Their further fate depends solely on the benevolence of your party.

The SPD, coalition partner of the CDU, has not yet officially commented on the case and sees the Schreiner personnel as the matter of the CDU. However, the entire Senate is also confronted with the fact that three out of twelve members have already lost their doctorate due to allegations of plagiarism. This does not throw good light on the scientific integrity of the Senate.

At the moment it remains to be seen how long the allegations against Manja Schreiner will take and what consequences result. A lot is at stake for themselves, because their political future depends largely on the results of the investigation and the support of their party.