Bundestag
Uproar in the Health Committee: AfD demands chairmanship
The AfD chairman Kay-Uwe Ziegler is said to have sat on the health committee with a sign with the addition of “committee chairman”. photo
© Kilian Genius/dpa
For more than two years, a conflict has been simmering over the AfD’s appointment to top positions in Bundestag committees. Now there is an open row.
There has been a scandal in the Bundestag’s Health Committee over the question of the chairmanship. The According to participants, AfD chairman Kay-Uwe Ziegler sat down with a sign with the addition “committee chairman” in the committee, which Green MP Kirsten Kappert-Gonther has headed as acting chairwoman since the beginning of the legislative period.
The meeting therefore began late after the committee members of the other factions initially did not take part in protest against the AfD campaign. Ziegler then vacated the place.
Greens: “Presumptuous appointment of the committee chairmanship”
Green parliamentary group leader Irene Mihalic told the editorial network Germany that another limit had been crossed with the “presumptuous appointment of the committee chairmanship”. The attitude expressed underlines the danger of the AfD and that it is serious about subversive plans. The consequences should be discussed in Parliament’s Council of Elders. Green Party politician Janosch Dahmen explained: “Such “coup” exercises show how dangerous this party is.” SPD MP Christos Pantazis said this “scandalous behavior” was unacceptable. Kappert-Gonther said, “the attempted self-empowerment via the committee leadership is an attack against democracy.”
The AfD, on the other hand, made it clear that it believes it has the right to appoint the committee chair and appoint a member of its parliamentary group. The parliamentary group’s health policy spokesman, Martin Sichert, spoke on Wednesday of a “boycott” and accused the other factions of a “destructive attitude”. Their behavior makes it impossible “to fill with life the committee chairs to which we are entitled in accordance with the Bundestag’s rules of procedure and agreements in the Council of Elders,” he said.
Two years of constant strife
The incident in the Health Committee is part of a dispute that has been going on for more than two years and will also be heard by the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe next Wednesday (March 20). The AfD faction has sued Germany’s highest court. After the last federal election, her candidates for the chairmanship of three Bundestag committees – including the Health Committee – failed.
Usually, the chairmanship of the committees is assigned according to a certain mechanism: the largest group can first choose a committee and occupy the head position there, then the second largest, the third largest and so on. This continues over several rounds until the chairs of the committees are distributed. The AfD came away empty-handed. The committees that affected them voted on who would fill the chair, but the AfD candidates failed.
Kappert-Gonther said that the Health Committee had often held secret, democratic elections for the chairmanship. No AfD candidate received a majority. The AfD parliamentary group believes, among other things, that their right to equal treatment as a parliamentary group has been violated.