BERLIN – It’s Sunday afternoon on the Friedrichstrasse in downtown Berlin and the dark-coloured Mercedes-Benz limousine just rolls across a red light as if it wasn’t there.
Not that a policeman could have done much about this breach of road traffic law even if he or she had wanted to. The driver would have been given some words of warning but allowed to go on his way.The back of the car displays a small oval plate with the letters CD for “Corps Diplomatique” and there’s the rub.Around 14,000 diplomats and their relatives live in Berlin, according to foreign office sources and they are subject to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.The document guarantees immunity from prosecution and means diplomats cannot be served with writs or clearance orders, allowing them to carry on with their work uninterrupted.Most diplomatic staff do stick to the rules, as officials in Berlin are keen to point out, but there are some notorious lawbreakers.A spokesman for the police union in Berlin said representatives of poorer countries who drive themselves and don’t use a chauffeur tend to stand out.“They drive the car from one reception to another, park where they like and do what they like on the road,” grumbled Eberhard Schoenberg.Police are not allowed to stop even a drunken diplomat, as a police spokesman remarked. “In extreme cases the police will escort such a driver, making sure the road ahead is clear.”Some members of the diplomatic corps not only drive strangely they do not pay their bills either, as Christian Democrat member of parliament Norbert Hauser pointed out to the house earlier this year.Secretary of State at the Foreign Ministry, Wolfgang Ischinger, believes the number of companies and landlords seeking help from the ministry over bad debts has increased steadily over the last five years. Outstanding commitments currently stand at 4.7 million German marks (2.1 million dollars). In 1999 the number of unpaid bills was less than half that figure.The problems were well-known in the old federal capital Bonn and “there’s no reason to assume they would be any different in Berlin,” said Dieter Bluemel who heads the city’s real estate owners’ association. He says the biggest headaches are caused by African diplomats and those from successor countries to the Soviet Union.Representatives from wealthy oil states drag their heels over paying bills too, according to the central agency for private health care in Berlin/Brandenburg.In a letter to Berlin hospitals managing director Juergen Moeller, suggested physicians should operate a pay-first policy for staff from certain Arab embassies after millions of marks went unpaid in Bonn.A department of the Foreign Office takes care of these difficult ones. “In serious cases we look into whether the ambassador should be summoned,” said the spokesman. The offender is then told to abide by the rules and laws of his host country. The accreditation of a new diplomat can also be made dependent on his or her willingness to pay off debts.If all else fails, a wayward diplomat can be declared as an undesirable person or persona non grata. That puts an end to any diplomatic career along the River Spree and usually means the offender has to leave the country immediately.
