Carsten Kohl/dpa AfD loses lawsuit over election of Bundestag president.
The AfD did well in the polls in the state elections in Brandenburg on Sunday, but it has had less success in court. The Federal Constitutional Court has rejected two lawsuits filed by parties seeking to claim the presidency of the Bundestag committees. In a ruling released on Wednesday, the Second Chamber of the Court ruled that the Bundestag is not obliged to appoint AfD members of parliament as chairmen of parliamentary committees. The election to decide the chair is within the framework of the “autonomy of the Bundestag’s rules of procedure,” presiding judge Doris König explained loudly. dpa.
During the current legislative period, AfD candidates failed to secure the necessary majority in the elections for the three Bundestag committee chairs. As a result, the group currently does not have a committee chair, but according to convention, it has three chairs based on its strength. The AfD sees this as a violation of its rights to equal treatment as a faction, to “effective opposition” and to fair and faithful application of the Bundestag’s rules of procedure, and has appealed to Karlsruhe in a constitutional complaint.
The point of reference for the complaints was the general procedure for appointing the committees, which is redesigned and reappointed after each election period. Which faction is given which committee chair is usually negotiated by the council of elders. If no agreement is reached, as after the federal elections in September 2021, the order of access is calculated according to the strength of the factions. During this legislative period, the committees for the interior and health and development cooperation belonged to the AfD.
However, because of the opposition of other factions to filling the positions with AfD politicians at the time, the elections had to be held in the committees. On December 15, 2021, secret elections were held in all three committees, in which all three AfD candidates clearly missed the required majority. A second attempt on January 12, 2022 ended with the same result. Until now, the vice-chairmen have chaired the relevant committees.
In his ruling, Justice König stressed that each faction must be treated equally according to its strength. The “right to participate” also applies to the Bundestag committees. In principle, all committees should be structured in a reduced form of the plenary session. However, the presiding judge said that this mirror image principle does not apply to committees and functions of a purely organizational nature. However, such a function is the chairmanship of the committee.
Christoph Hoffmann (FDP), vice-chairman of the development committee, welcomed the ruling. An AfD member of the committee he chairs said loudly that it would be “difficult to explain to our partners in the southern hemisphere.” dpa. Development cooperation is essentially Germany’s calling card. If it features “politicians with racial or racist leanings,” says Hoffmann, “it can be not only problematic for our country, but even harmful.”
The Federal Constitutional Court also examined the 2019 dismissal of AfD right-winger Stephan Brandner from his post as head of the legal committee. Brandner was excluded from the vote in October 2019 after a synagogue attack in Halle (Saale) by sending a tweet on the short messaging service Twitter (now Twitter). Brandner later apologized, but did not want to resign as head of the committee. The court ruled that the committee itself was justified in taking responsibility for the dismissal.
After the verdict was announced, Brandner spoke of a “dark day for parliamentarism”, which would significantly weaken the rights of the opposition. Johannes Fechner, the parliamentary chair of the SPD parliamentary group, commented positively on the verdict. He announced that the government faction would propose clarifying the Bundestag’s rules of procedure. According to this, in the future, both committee chairs and Bundestag standing committee chairs “could be excluded from voting according to clear rules”.
