The new government is far from in place, but parliament is already meeting for the first session: thanks to the 3G rule, the parliamentary groups can participate in full and are already showing a clear edge in the debate.
There will be a lot going on in the next four years, that much is already indicated in the constituent session of the 20th German Bundestag. Although there is hardly any opportunity for debate, the few speeches are used to show a clear edge on fundamental issues. Jan Korte, parliamentary manager of the Left, accuses the AfD of being “parliamentarily stupid”.
The reason: The right-wing populists have, as in the past several times, requested that gender language should be banned from printed matter in the Bundestag. Asterisks, colons, internal I, the whole “Orwellian language nonsense”, as AfD vice Stephan Brandner calls the gendered way of speaking, his party wants to keep out of bills and applications in the future.
The AfD fails not only with this motion because of the opposing votes of all other parties, but also with the attempt that a single parliamentary group can introduce a motion of no confidence against the Federal Chancellor. FDP MP Marco Buschmann is outraged that the party would come “on quiet feet” with this demand. In truth, it is “a complete reversal of the character of this instrument”, said the Liberals’ Parliamentary Secretary.
With their demand, the AfD wants to attack the current constructive vote of no confidence. It stipulates that the Bundestag Chancellor can only express mistrust by electing a successor by majority vote. So it is not enough to decide against the person in office; Parliament must at the same time speak in favor of someone else. This rule is “an answer to history,” said Buschmann in his speech. Because in the Weimar Republic, in which there was not yet a constructive vote of no confidence, “dozens of governments have been chased out of office”. That paved the way to dictatorship.
Schäuble triumphs over Gauland
As expected, all parties except the AfD vote against their proposal, and the party has just as little success with the plan to award the presidency to its honorary chairman Alexander Gauland, who is the oldest member of parliament after years. Instead, the regulation from 2017 remains, according to which the age president is who has the most years of service. At 49 years of age in the Bundestag, that’s Wolfgang Schäuble.
AfD man Bernd Baumann vented the anger about the expected defeat in his motivation and tried to make the first Nazi comparison of the new legislative period: The National Socialists had also broken with the existing tradition of making the oldest member of parliament the senior president. Baumann asks: “Should that be your role model?”
The parliamentary directors of other parliamentary groups counter: Michael Grosse-Brömer from the CDU says that Gauland disqualified himself by calling the Nazi era, “the darkest chapter in German history,” fly shit “. In the eyes of SDP politician Carsten Schneider, the comparison with the Nazis is simply “a cheek”.
In the very first session of the new legislative period, for example, the parliament comes up to operating temperature quite quickly, which is basically a few degrees higher since the right-wing populists moved into the Bundestag in 2017. At this elevated temperature one has now again settled down, it seems. Buschmann, Grosse-Brömer, Schneider, Korte, Britta Haßelmann from the Greens – each and every one of them takes an aspect of the AfD applications and dissects it with counter-arguments in a few sentences. As if the division of labor had previously been agreed in order to give the requests of the AfD parliamentary group, which has shrunk by five people, as many objections as necessary, but as little consideration as possible.
Otherwise there is a certain joy in the air at this first session of the newly elected parliament, after all, it has not happened for many months – a plenary debate in front of a full house. All 763 members elected at the end of September should be able to be there when the 20th Bundestag is constituted, despite Corona. So the distance rule does not apply as before, but 3G – you have to be proven to have recovered, vaccinated or tested, so it was agreed between the groups in the run-up to this meeting. 23 AfD MPs who have refused to provide information about their corona status are sitting in a visitor gallery.
Shake hands, pat shoulders
The joy may also refer to the work ahead of the parliamentarians, which, if a traffic light coalition actually comes about, will probably look very different from the previous four years of the grand coalition. In addition, many MPs have recently moved into parliament. A touch of optimism is noticeable there, and routine is also celebrated at the same time. During breaks in meetings, while the senior president and the new president of the Bundestag are voting, the politicians stand together in ever new constellations, chatting, shaking hands and patting shoulders.
Claudia Roth from the Greens, FDP leader Christian Lindner and his CDU colleague Armin Laschet – as a coalition, Jamaica was not supposed to be four years ago, as conversation in the plenary hall it seems stimulated and also familiar with each other. Only the AfD is largely isolated from the banter on the sidelines of the meeting, a behavior that seems to suit the other MPs.
Some might wish the AfD people downstairs in the hall to join their colleagues on the anti-3G grandstand. In any case, the FDP parliamentary group is currently trying to get rid of its position to the left of the AfD and instead slip between the Greens and the Union. The latter would then bump into the right-wing populists on their right fringes. The decision on this is likely to lead to controversial debates. But the Bundestag does not have to deal with that today either.
The number of controversies at this first plenary session is actually limited to the AfD motions. The election of the new Bundestag President Bärbel Bas went smoothly. With 576 yes-votes, the Duisburg SPD woman achieved almost 80 percent approval and, after a very liberated “I accept the election with all my heart,” takes the place of her predecessor Wolfgang Schäuble, who had previously asked parliament for support and respect for his successor .
Merkel chats – on the left with Sussmuth, on the right with Steinmeier
In her speech, Bas pointed out that she was only the third woman to head parliament in 20 legislative terms. “It’s not glorious,” she says, recalling Annemarie Renger, who had to fight for the office in 1972. The second woman in this position, Rita Süßmuth, listens to Bärbel Bas from the gallery of honor. Next to her is still-Chancellor Angela Merkel, who seems to feel quite comfortable in the spectator stands and always chats to the left with Süßmuth or to her right with Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
A little later in the afternoon, Steinmeier dismissed the Chancellor from her position. She will continue her official duties until a new government is formed, but today in parliament the seating arrangements already show that Merkel’s time is finally over. That she is present as a spectator.
The new MP Armin Laschet has to be content with a seat in the second row of his parliamentary group, with his former opponent Friedrich Merz it is currently only enough for a seat in the back rows, which do not even have a table in front of them. Whether he will make it back to the front is a question that will probably be answered in the next few months.