parties
Union parliamentary group vice-president excludes cooperation with BSW
For Andrea Lindholz, deputy chairwoman of the Union parliamentary group, the BSW is “a mix between the AfD and the Left Party.” photo
© Michael Kappeler/dpa
A cooperation between the CDU and CSU and Sahra Wagenknecht’s alliance? Andrea Lindholz believes that is impossible. She also finds clear words for Hans-Georg Maaßen.
The deputy chairwoman of the Union parliamentary group, Andrea Lindholz, believes that the CDU and CSU will cooperate with the alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) finds it unthinkable. “I can’t imagine working with Sahra Wagenknecht’s new party any more than I can imagine working with the Left Party,” the CSU politician told the dpa. Because according to everything that is known about the BSW program so far, this new foundation is “a mix between the AfD and the Left Party”. For her personally, it was clear that “both don’t suit us at all,” said Lindholz.
In October, Wagenknecht and her supporters split off from the Left Party and founded the new alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). The BSW was recently at six to seven percent in voter surveys nationwide.
Lindholz also distanced himself from the right-wing conservative Union of Values and its chairman, the former President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maaßen. She said: “As far as the so-called union of values is concerned, the people who express themselves there are politically very close to the AfD.”
The domestic politician added: “I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some members who are already known to our security authorities.” Last week it became known that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) had stored data on its former President Maaßen in the area of right-wing extremism.
Lindholz: At what point did Maaßen take a wrong turn?
“I am stunned by the development that Hans-Georg Maaßen has taken,” said Lindholz, who had previously seen Maaßen several times at committee meetings in the Bundestag. After all, before his assignment to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Maaßen worked under several ministers in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, including SPD Interior Minister Otto Schily. “I have often asked myself the question of when Mr. Maaßen took the wrong turn,” said the deputy group leader.
He has always taken a “rather restrictive line” in migration policy, but she did not hear any racist comments from him at the time and “the fact that he is now leaning so far to the right is shocking.” It is a good sign that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is simply doing its job here, without exception, even when it comes to a former boss.