Back chairs in the Bundestag: FDP no longer wants to sit next to AfD

New seating arrangements after 70 years
Back chairs in the Bundestag: In the future, the FDP will no longer sit next to the AfD

Just one week after taking office, the Ampel-Coalition is throwing the Bundestag upside down: After more than 70 years, the SPD, Greens and FDP have given the Liberals a new seat in the plenary hall. The FDP parliamentary group, which previously sat between the AfD and the Union, is moving to the side of the Greens with the parliamentary resolution on Thursday and thus in the middle of the plenary. At the same time, the members of the CDU and CSU will sit right next to the AfD parliamentary group in the future – which is causing considerable displeasure in the Union.

For the FDP, however, the desire to have a large chair back is not only symbolic, as the “Tagesschau” reports. The FDP MP Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann declared in May that her parliamentary group had to listen to insulting and inhuman comments again and again. The FDP MPs could hear them clearly, but quietly enough that the Bundestag Presidium would not notice anything. “This disrespectful manner in this house is unbearable,” she said.

As the “force of the political center”, the Union wants to keep the seating arrangements

The parliamentary manager of the Union parliamentary group, Thorsten Frei (CDU), called the traffic light approach an “expression of disrespect”. He accused the coalition of wanting to “push his parliamentary group to the edge of the plenary”. The members of the CDU and CSU demonstratively crowned Frei’s appearance in the lively debate with a long final applause.

His FDP counterpart, Johannes Vogel, described the placement of the Free Democrats as an anomaly in the political left-right scheme of the previous seating arrangement: “We are a force of the political center, and that is why we also belong in the center of the plenary.”

As early as 1949, the FDP was placed to the right of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group in the Bonn plenary hall. Until the 1950s there was a strong national liberal tendency in the FDP, while in parts of the Union there was still a debate about Christian socialism. But the FDP’s wish to swap places with the Union became a big issue in the last legislative period at the latest – above all because of the proximity to the AfD’s unpopular newcomers to parliament.

“Every normal MP doesn’t want to sit next to you”

Green parliamentary group leader Irene Mihalic was Solomonic: The FDP’s desire for a change was “at least as understandable” as the Union’s desire to adhere to the status quo. “Every normal MP would not want to sit next to you,” said Jan Korte from the Left to the AfD. His parliamentary group supported the exchange of places initiated by the SPD, Greens and FDP.

But the debate was characterized by mutual accusations: Both the coalition and the opposition emphasized that there are currently more important issues. This is exactly how the traffic light parties justified the fact that they originally wanted to bring the change to the seating arrangement through the Bundestag without a debate. The Union, on the other hand, insisted on a plenary debate, but described the entire reform as a superfluous “sideline”.

AfD “doesn’t matter who sits next to us”

In any case, there was no talk of pre-Christmas peace in the last week of the meeting of the year, because the AfD was also grumbling. After her candidate for the post of Vice President of the Bundestag – as usual – repeatedly failed to find a majority, her candidates for the chairmanship of the Bundestag committees for home affairs, health and development have now also failed.

The AfD abstained from the vote on the seating arrangements. Your MP Stephan Brandner said he no longer wanted to sit next to the “green-left-submissive Postengrapscher troops” and the “blasé types from the FDP”, but in the end he was generous: “We don’t care who sits next to us anyway . “

sources: DPA, “daily News“

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