Tuesday, October 26, 2021
3G rule denied
22 AfD MPs only remain in the stands
The 20th German Bundestag is meeting for the first time and all 736 newly elected MPs are allowed to enter the plenary without a gap – if they can show that they have been vaccinated, recovered or tested. But almost two dozen AfD MPs do not want that.
At the constituent session of the Bundestag, around two dozen MPs did not accept the 3G regulation that applies due to Corona – i.e. access to the plenary session only for those who have been vaccinated, recovered or tested. They therefore had to take a seat on a reserved grandstand and keep their distance from one another. 22 of the 82 AfD MPs were involved, as the AfD politician Malte Kaufmann wrote on Twitter. Including the MP Thomas Seitz, who was in the intensive care unit in December 2020 because of Covid disease.
Nevertheless, they were able to take part in the votes on the new parliamentary presidium. There were delays, however, as voting in the stands had to be made in writing instead of using the normal electronic system.
The AfD politician Karsten Hilse wore a sticker with the words “not vaccinated” during the meeting. The Green health expert Janosch Dahmen has sharply criticized the boycott of the 3G rule by parliamentarians. With this, the AfD proves once again “that it is the parliamentary arm of the lateral thinking movement,” he wrote on Twitter.
The parliamentary groups had previously jointly decided that only those MPs who had been vaccinated, recovered or tested for the corona virus at short notice were allowed to enter the lower area of the plenary hall in the Reichstag building. With the appropriate evidence, they were given a black, red and gold ribbon around an arm joint. In return, there were no longer any distance rules, so that all 736 MPs were able to follow the meeting in the plenary hall.
The AfD tried to overturn this regulation during the meeting. But it failed because of the resistance of the other factions. At the end of the session, the new President of the Bundestag, Bärbel Bas, also asked for the pandemic to avoid singing along with the national anthem – the wind quintet of the Berlin University of the Arts played it instrumentally.