Apparently in order to prevent the AfD from accessing certain specialist committees, the government factions of the CSU and Free Voters want to adapt the state parliament’s rules of procedure. A new procedure is intended to change the order in which the political groups access the right to chair the respective committees. The state parliament is scheduled to vote on this this Wednesday. Accordingly, the CSU, as the strongest faction, should initially take part twice instead of once as before, and then the FW should elect a committee of their choice. Because it can be assumed that the government factions want to appoint the chairmen of the committees for the budget, the constitution and internal security, which are considered particularly sensitive, these positions would be closed to the AfD.
“With this change, we are strengthening the democratic processes – especially with regard to the opposition parties, which have extremely different orientations,” said Michael Hofmann, the new parliamentary managing director of the CSU state parliamentary group, on Tuesday – without specifically mentioning the AfD. FW parliamentary group leader Florian Streibl said South German newspaperthat, for example, the responsibility of the Interior Committee for the police and the responsibility for migration in the Constitutional Committee “should lie with a democratic faction”.
The SPD parliamentary group has announced that it will at least not reject the government proposal. A changed access procedure would also disadvantage his party, said parliamentary group leader Florian von Brunn. In this case, however, “the interests of democracy and the protection of the constitution come before party interests.” The Greens will reject the amendment from the CSU and FW, announced their parliamentary director Jürgen Mistol. He points out that the respective chairmen are elected by the committee members. “Nobody has to elect a chairman they don’t want,” Mistol said on Tuesday. Instead of “distorting the rules of procedure,” one could simply reject the respective candidate.
It is actually very questionable that the members of the other parliamentary groups elect an AfD MP as committee chairman. “The way the AfD is acting now, I have the biggest problems,” said FW parliamentary group leader Streibl. Members of the other state parliamentary groups had recently expressed similar opposition.