The party wants to sue
FC Bundestag wants to throw out AfD members
March 22, 2024, 5:25 p.m
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Members of the German Parliament also play football – at FC Bundestag. In the future, representatives of the AfD will no longer be welcome. But the party has already announced that it wants to take legal action against it.
The FC Bundestag no longer wants to tolerate members of the AfD in its ranks. Membership in the AfD is not compatible with membership in the cross-party football club, the general meeting determined in a vote on Thursday evening, as the club’s captain, Mahmut Özdemir, announced. After a debate, a majority of 29 MPs voted in favor, with 11 votes against and 2 abstentions. The board was instructed to initiate the necessary discussions and measures.
According to Özdemir, the FC Bundestag has been dealing with the question of the compatibility of AfD membership in the FC Bundestag since 2017. That year, the club’s statutes also stated that the FC Bundestag, as an association of members of the German Bundestag, represented “the values of the free-democratic basic order and the parliamentary system of the Federal Republic of Germany on a non-partisan and inter-party basis.” “He stands for cosmopolitanism, international understanding and tolerance and takes a clear position against any form of nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobic tendencies,” it says.
“Membership in the AfD means that every single member agrees to be part of a community that casts doubt on these stated values of the statutes,” Özdemir continued. He was referring to the report by the media company Correctiv about a meeting of radical right-wingers on November 25th in Potsdam, which was also attended by AfD politicians and individual members of the CDU and the very conservative Union of Values.
AfD wants to take legal action against it
The sports policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group, Jörn König, spoke of an “exclusion decision” that was not appropriate in a democracy. “We will challenge this decision legally,” announced König, who is a member of the FC Bundestag. He accused the SPD and the Greens of using the FC Bundestag for political purposes. “The previous long-term activities together have been sporty, harmonious and characterized by great cohesion,” explained König. He recalled that together they won a title at the European Parliamentary Championships in 2022.
“Our signal is clear that we in the FC Bundestag will not tolerate members who, as members of the AfD, make a deal with right-wing extremism or at least accept it with approval. This means that every single AfD colleague can consider whether they should be a member of the AfD or membership in the FC Bundestag is more important,” emphasized the club captain.
According to the club’s own information, the club’s first game took place on April 12, 1961, against a VIP team from WDR. The players meet every Tuesday during the meeting weeks from March to November. The home stadium is the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark in Berlin. Many former members later went on to have careers, becoming ministers or even chancellors. The club names, among others, Joschka Fischer, Franz Josef Jung, Norbert Lammert, Franz Müntefering, Peter Ramsauer, Wolfgang Schäuble, Rudolf Scharping, Andreas Scheuer, Gerhard Schröder, Peter Struck, Klaus Töpfer and Theodor Waigel.