scandal in the European Committee
Union MPs vote for AfD motion for the first time
7/7/2023 8:52 p.m
Novelty in the Bundestag: For the first time, Union politicians vote for a motion by the AfD. The two dissenters are CSU politicians. One of them is ex-transport minister Andreas Scheuer. His party colleague Alexander Radwan speaks of an oversight.
According to a media report, Union members of parliament voted together with the AfD for the first time in a Bundestag committee. As the “Spiegel” reports, the right-wing populist party submitted an application to the European Committee of the Bundestag on Wednesday to cancel a planned vote on the Energy Efficiency Act. Accordingly, the CSU politicians Andreas Scheuer and Alexander Radwan also voted with the AfD. In the ranks of the Union, the process is said to have caused anger and heated discussions in front of the committee room.
Before the vote, the Union had submitted an application for the item to be removed from the agenda, reports the magazine. In the AfD application, the two CSU deputies then deviated from the group line of not voting with the right. Radwan explained to the “Spiegel” that he had accidentally voted for the AfD application. “With the first application, which apparently came from the AfD, unlike the following two applications, I assumed that it had also been made by us – after all, we were the first to address this,” said Radwan. Scheuer did not want to comment on the incident when asked.
It is not the first time that MPs from other parties in the Bundestag have voted with the AfD. In June 2021, after a long plenary session at 2:30 a.m., members of the FDP voted in favor of a motion by the right-wing party. At the time it was actually an accident. The Liberals then sent a request for correction to the stenographic service of the parliamentary administration. The error was later corrected in the plenary minutes.