After the polarizing state election campaign and at the start of a European election year, the five parliamentary groups in the Bavarian state parliament will meet for their winter meetings in January. The traditional meetings are intended to set priorities for future parliamentary work. At the same time, they serve for internal sorting – the parliamentary groups were formed in October, and the specialist committees in the state parliament were formed just a few weeks ago. The 85-member CSU parliamentary group has a good third of newcomers, the FW and AfD have grown significantly, and the SPD and Greens have shrunk. There were changes at the top of three factions, Klaus Holetschek (CSU) and Katrin Ebner-Steiner (AfD) took over the chairs, Katharina Schulze now leads the Greens alone, no longer in a dual leadership. Operations in the Maximilianeum have only just started.
Economy, artificial intelligence and health are topics for the CSU parliamentary group, which meets for three days in mid-January in Banz Monastery in Upper Franconia. But above all, security policy and the world situation. The Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, Carsten Breuer, will be a guest. There are also talks with the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and the Consul General of the State of Israel for southern Germany, Talya Lador-Fresher. Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) recently visited Israel and Albania. Söder, who has obviously been trying to sharpen his party’s foreign policy profile for some time, will again give a keynote speech to MPs. Europe and the upcoming elections in June are also likely to shape the retreat, including in exchanges with Manfred Weber, CSU top candidate and EPP group leader in the European Parliament.
By the way, the CSU state group in the Bundestag is already in retreat around Epiphany, in the Seeon monastery in Upper Bavaria. According to reports, they want to prepare for a potential failure of the traffic light and subsequent government involvement.
The Free Voters have also invited Consul General Lador-Fresher to their retreat. They will meet in Lindau next week. It’s about Bavarian-Israeli relations and the protection of Jewish life in Bavaria. One of the FW’s most important political initiatives of the year is “more innovation-friendliness” in Bavaria. The transformation of the automotive industry could become a success story “if we ensure technological openness for all drive concepts,” says parliamentary group leader Florian Streibl. At Continental in Lindau, MPs want to find out more about autonomous driving.
In the same week, the SPD in Munich is concerned with “responsibility instead of populism,” as parliamentary group leader Florian von Brunn announced. A financial policy with investments in the future and the defense of “the open society against right-wing populism, right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism” are on the agenda. The top candidate for the European elections, ex-Federal Justice Minister Katarina Barley, is at the meeting in the state parliament, and the Bavarian European frontwoman Maria Noichl is debating about a social, progressive Europe.
Notorious dispute in the AfD? Not this time.
The Greens are holding their two-day retreat in Munich, and on January 19th an outdoor meeting is planned in Pullach in the Isar Valley, a pioneering location for geothermal energy. After visiting the facilities, the group will also visit the plant of Linde Engineering, Pullach Geothermal Energy’s largest customer, and will discuss local and sustainable heat supply with other companies. The Greens regularly accuse the state government of not making enough use of geothermal energy, for example in providing financial security for drilling in municipalities. An exam day is scheduled for internals. Since the state elections, the Greens have no longer been the opposition leader in the state parliament and are therefore in a new role. Like the AfD, they have 32 MPs, but performed 0.2 percentage points worse.
The AfD parliamentary group meets in Franconia in January, but there are no details about the location. The exam is apparently not open to the press, but there will be a media event in the state parliament. The “guidelines for opposition work” in the new role will be discussed as well as a “ten-point plan for Bavaria,” it was said. In the last electoral period, the AfD meeting did not always take place regularly and in full due to internal strife. Things are likely to be different now, the power struggle and dispute over direction have subsided – due to the clear dominance of the ethnic camp. After the parliamentary groups’ retreats, the state parliament will meet for its first session of the new year on January 24th.