The Left parliamentary group in the Bundestag will be dissolved on December 6th. The MPs decided this at the parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday. “This day is no reason to celebrate,” said parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch before the meeting began. There will now no longer be a parliamentary group to the left of the traffic light coalition in the Bundestag. Bartsch said that “of course it is a defeat, also for me personally.”
According to the Bundestag administration, a parliamentary group in the German Bundestag dissolving during an ongoing legislative period has not happened since the 1960s. On the Left, this step came after a total of ten MPs around the former parliamentary group leader Sahra Wagenknecht declared their departure from the party a good three weeks ago and announced that they wanted to found a new party called the “Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht”. However, the remaining 28 members of the Left are not enough to maintain parliamentary group status in the Bundestag. This would require at least 37 representatives in the current legislative period.
Tired of the “wagon servants”
According to SZ information, there were four abstentions from the resolution on liquidation. Four MPs who had left the Left with Wagenknecht also took part in the parliamentary group meeting. It is expected that both sides will now apply to be admitted to the Bundestag as a group.
The decision to dissolve itself was preceded by weeks of struggle over the bureaucratic liquidation procedure. When presenting the plans of her new party, Wagenknecht, who has now broken away, had already emphasized that she and all her colleagues had submitted applications in order to be able to remain as members of the group despite leaving the party. Wagenknecht combined this with the point that they wanted to give the parliamentary group employees – who will lose their jobs after the Left Party loses its parliamentary group status – the maximum possible time to prepare for the professional change. This construction would have been possible until the formal founding of the new party, which Wagenknecht announced for January. After that, the faction would have had to be liquidated in any case.
However, it was quickly heard from the remaining left that they wanted to keep the time of the joint faction with the people who were internally ridiculed as “waggoners” as short as possible. The dissolution date that has now been decided was reportedly chosen to ensure employment for the group employees beyond Christmas. This also avoids having to formally deal with the applications of the MPs who have resigned to remain in the group. There were different opinions within the left about how this would have been necessary – there is no precedent. The idea that the Wagenknecht people could appear before the parliamentary group individually to explain their reasons for leaving the party was not particularly attractive for the remaining left.
“There has to be an end to the unspeakable self-preoccupation,” says Bartsch
Instead, the party is now trying to present the departure of the Wagenknecht group as a new beginning. “There has to be an end to the unspeakable self-employment,” said Bartsch. The end of the group is “by no means the end of the left”. He stated the goal of entering parliament again as a parliamentary group in the 2025 federal election.
It is unclear whether the party will succeed in sending the desired signals of unity. There are always disagreements between the party leadership and the parliamentary group leadership, even beyond the debate about Sahra Wagenknecht. It is still unclear whether the remaining 28 Left MPs can agree to work together in a parliamentary group in the Bundestag in the future, or whether they will split into two or more. In addition, the Left party conference is coming up in Augsburg this weekend, including discussions on an open stage.
Party chairman Martin Schirdewan called on the 28 Left MPs to work together. “If there were personal differences in the past, then they are doomed to overcome these differences now,” he tells the SZ.