faq
Why is the AfD allowed to employ employees who are active in right-wing extremist organizations? Why does the Bundestag administration have no say in this and how are employees checked? An overview.
Why can people who are active in right-wing extremist organizations work for the AfD parliamentary group?
Like all 735 members of the German Bundestag, the 78 AfD parliamentarians also decide independently who they employ. This applies both to the staffing of the Bundestag offices in Berlin and in the constituencies.
Accordingly, the parliamentarian and the respective employee sign an employment contract with each other. The AfD parliamentary group also decides for itself who it employs. The political groups are not part of the public administration. The Bundestag administration has no say in filling positions.
How many employees work for the AfD in the Bundestag?
According to the German Bundestag, around 5,600 people were employed by members of all parliamentary groups at the end of January – 2,600 in the constituencies and 3,000 in the Berlin offices. The parliamentary administration states the number of employees in the parliamentary groups as 1,121 in its most recent list from November 2022. The AfD parliamentary group therefore employs 144 people. On BRHowever, when asked, the AfD states the number of its employees as 182.
There are also hundreds of employees of the AfD MPs. Neither the Bundestag administration nor the AfD parliamentary group provides any information on this. After BR-Research shows that more than 500 people work for the AfD parliamentary group and its MPs. How many exactly is unclear.
How much money goes to AfD employees?
Since March 1, 2024, the Bundestag administration has provided each member of parliament with a monthly flat rate of almost 26,000 euros to pay their employees. MPs can decide for themselves how many employees they distribute this money to. Depending on their training and tasks, full-time employees of MPs earn between 2,000 and almost 9,600 euros gross.
The majority of the money that the parliamentary groups receive from the federal budget goes towards paying their employees. According to its own information, the AfD spent around 12.5 million euros of its income of almost 17 million euros on its parliamentary group staff in 2022. Each of the 78 MPs also receives a flat rate employee allowance. In total it is worth more than 30 million euros annually.
What tasks do the employees take on?
They manage the offices of the parliamentarians in the constituency and in Berlin, prepare committee meetings, write speeches and government inquiries, handle communication with the media, create content for social platforms, and view and process documents that are sometimes security-relevant and therefore sensitive. Only the respective MP knows the exact tasks of their employees.
How are employees checked?
The access and security regulations applicable in the German Bundestag are, among other things, the responsibility of the Council of Elders. Employees of members of the Bundestag must present a police certificate of good conduct to the Bundestag administration when they begin their employment. According to the Bundestag administration, the parliamentarian will be “informed” about entries. She initially does nothing further because of an entry in the certificate of good conduct.
People who want to enter the Bundestag buildings need a house ID card. Employees with such an ID card are allowed entry without further security checks. Before they receive this, the responsible authorities compare various police databases as part of a “reliability check”. A new rule has been in effect since March 2023: This test must be repeated annually.
If an employee fails this test, the administration will deny them the house ID card or access authorizations that have already been granted will be revoked and Bundestag ID cards that have already been issued will be blocked. The employee can apply for such a card again after one year.
The Bundestag administration states that it did not issue or revoked the Bundestag ID card for two employees of members of parliament or parliamentary groups in the current legislative period. She does not comment further on this. The BRAccording to research, both cases involve employees of AfD MPs.
Depending on the tasks and depending on whether and to what extent employees have access to confidential or secret documents, there is also a multi-stage verification process according to the rules of the “Security Check Act” (SÜG). Information from authorities can be requested or the employee’s personal environment can be examined.
Which organizations does it classify? defense of Constitution as right-wing extremist?
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies various organizations and parties as right-wing extremist. Some of them have been on the radar of the domestic secret service for decades, for example the party “Die Heimat”, which was formerly called the NPD.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) is treating the AfD as a “suspected case” in the area of right-wing extremism. This means that officials are currently checking whether there is enough evidence to classify the AfD as right-wing extremist.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified the “Junge Alternative” (JA), the youth organization of the AfD, as definitely right-wing extremist in 2023. In addition, the party’s state associations in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia are classified as right-wing extremist by the respective state offices for the protection of the constitution.
For several years now, the BfV has placed particular focus on the “New Right”. In its annual report, the authority writes that it is an “informal network of groups, individuals and organizations […]in which national-conservative and right-wing extremist forces work together to use different strategies to enforce partially anti-liberal and anti-democratic positions in society and politics.” For this purpose, the BfV continues, “parliamentary and extra-parliamentary movements […] “closely interlinked with protest and demonstration initiatives”.
The authority includes the “Compact Magazin GmbH”, “One Percent”, the “Identitarian Movement Germany” and the “Institute for State Policy” (IfS) in this network. These are each classified as “secure right-wing extremist efforts”. According to the BfV, the publishing house “Antaios”, which is closely linked to the IfS, is a suspected case and also part of the “New Right”.
How does he justify it? defense of Constitution this classification?
Racism, anti-Semitism, group-related misanthropy – according to the Federal and State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, this is what unites right-wing extremist movements. The BfV attributes to them that “belonging to an ethnic group or nation determines the actual value of a person.”
In addition, because of the rejection of central values of the free democratic basic order, they are in “fundamental contradiction to the Basic Law”. Against this background, Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, to whom the BfV reports, has emphasized several times: “Right-wing extremism remains the greatest extremist threat to democracy in Germany.”