It is one of the excitements of the new legislative period that the AfD takes over the chairmanship of the interior committee. This is tricky indeed, but the negative effects are likely to be limited. In the Bundestag, however, there is heated argument about it.
Last week, the squabble began in the Bundestag – not in the plenary, where the members of parliament usually riot, but behind the scenes, in the corridors, in the offices. Topic: The AfD will chair several committees. In principle, this is nothing new. In the last legislative period, the party also chaired three committees, including the important budget committee. But now the AfD is supposed to occupy the chairmanship of the interior committee, of all things, as well as the leadership of the committees for health and development cooperation.
On this Tuesday, the party also announced who should head the Interior Committee in the future: the Baden-Württemberg MP Martin Hess. The police officer was previously the parliamentary group’s deputy domestic policy spokesman. AfD parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel warned the other groups not to vote for Hess and the other candidates of their party. “We see with great irritation that other groups are already threatening to let our candidates fail,” she said.
Especially in the opposition, they had their hands over their heads together last week. CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt said: “I have an inner outrage that the interior committee has gone to the AfD.” The former CDU member of the Bundestag Wolfgang Bosbach spoke of a “capital mistake” of the traffic light parties. He had chaired the committee himself for six years.
The committees are extremely important for the work in the Bundestag. This is where the actual work takes place. They are filled according to the balance of power in the Bundestag. In the last legislative period, the Interior Committee had 45 members. They debate bills, listen to experts and occasionally work out compromises. At the end of their work, they give the members of their parliamentary group in the Bundestag a recommendation for a resolution, which the party friends in plenary rely on. In a sense, the heart of Parliament beats in the committees.
External impact problematic
The fact that the AfD is now chairing the prestigious interior committee is particularly sensitive to external impact, says Düsseldorf political scientist Stefan Marschall ntv.de. “If a party is at least partially problematic, as its observation by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution shows, the Interior Committee is of course particularly difficult and critical here.” The professor at Heinrich Heine University is alluding to the fact that the AfD is being monitored by the protection of the constitution in several federal states. The party prevented the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution from observing the entire party with a complaint to the Cologne Higher Administrative Court, which has not yet been decided.
The AfD would not be able to influence the work of the protection of the constitution through its committee chairman. It is true that it is the task of the body to oversee it. However, he does not intervene in operational work. In any case, according to Marschall, the majority in the committee is always decisive and that corresponds to the balance of power in the Bundestag. An AfD chairman could not simply set an AfD agenda. He could also be outvoted in this case.
“The committee does not automatically become an AfD committee through the AfD chairmanship. But the chairman also plays a symbolic role externally. You sit at the head of the committee, you also sit at the head of a committee secretariat. That also leads to an increased visibility of the AfD. “
The Brandner case shows what could happen
For this reason it is the next mistake of the traffic light for the Union and also for the left to have left the important committee to the AfD. The criticism is aimed primarily at the Greens because, after the SPD and the Union, they had the third access to a committee chair. The Interior Committee was out of the question for the SPD because it heads the Interior Ministry – such a combination is unusual. The Union elected the Committee on Budgets, which is traditionally chaired by the largest opposition faction. The Greens took the European Committee. Their former parliamentary group leader Anton Hofreiter is said to be chairman there. The Greens rejected criticism that they had left the internal committee to the AfD. Group leader Britta Haßelmann said last week that the Greens had agreed to choose the chairmanship of the European Committee as the first option, just as the SPD did in the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Initially, SPD politicians had also defended the allocation of posts. But that sounds very different now. On Tuesday, parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich said that his group would look “closely” at every candidate and pointed out that a committee would be able to work without the election of a chairman. In this case the deputy chairmen would take over the management. Left parliamentary group leader Amira Mohamed Ali has already taken a clear position: “The left will never support a candidate from the AfD for such an office,” she said.
The new FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr had regretted the AfD chairmanship of the interior committee last week, but accepted it. Now he said: “A committee chairman also presents Parliament to the outside world, so it depends on personal and professional suitability.” There is no automatic mechanism that a candidate for a committee chairmanship is also elected by the committee members.
The case of Stephan Brandner showed that chairing a committee in the hands of the AfD would not be a completely normal matter. “It wasn’t quite as calm and conflict-free there,” says Marschall. The AfD MP took over the chairmanship of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection in 2018. A year later he criticized the award of the Federal Cross of Merit to Udo Lindenberg on Twitter in connection with the anti-Semitic terrorist attack in Halle. He himself used anti-Semitic formulations. The Legal Committee then voted him out and a CDU politician took over the chairmanship of the committee.