Rights to information
The Parliamentary Commissioner has the right to demand information, and access to records, from the Defence Minister and all his subordinate agencies and personnel. This right enables him, when reviewing petitions, to request the Bundeswehr or other agencies to investigate a certain matter, to comment on the findings of the investigation, and to submit relevant documents to him. The right to demand information is also the basis on which he and his staff hold meetings with personnel in the purview of the Defence Minister in order to gather information and establish working contacts.
When acting on instructions from the Bundestag or the Defence Committee to investigate a specific matter, and dealing with a petition in which the petitioner expresses a specific grievance, the Parliamentary Commissioner has the right to hear the petitioner as well as experts and witnesses.
The Parliamentary Commissioner may at any time and without prior announcement visit any units, headquarters, installations or administrative agencies of the Bundeswehr. This right is vested exclusively in his person.
Field visits enable the Commissioner to meet and talk to service personnel of all ranks and thereby to gain a first-hand impression of conditions within the Bundeswehr. During such visits, service personnel bring to his attention any problems they encounter in performing their everyday military duties as well as their personal worries and concerns, which often are not expressed fully, if at all, in petitions. This allows the Parliamentary Commissioner to take preventive action by immediately passing on any significant findings to the Defence Minister.
The Parliamentary Commissioner has another major source of information: his right to request reports on the exercise of disciplinary power in the Bundeswehr and to attend criminal or disciplinary proceedings in court as an observer.
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