AfD and committees: The first big hardest test for Merz and Klingbeil

The CDU chairman Friedrich Merz has not yet been elected chancellor. Even the associated contract is not even approved by the SPD basis.

However, there has long been argument about the interpretation of the agreements, for example in the minimum wage or in the case of asylum refusions – and in the event of a procedure with a particularly acute potential for fighting: How does the future coalition in the Bundestag keep it with the AfD?

Or in other words: How stable is the so -called fire wall? And: where do you put them at all?

The CDU member of the Bundestag Johann WadePhul, at least Merz faction vice, openly advocated giving the AfD the committee chairman to the AfD. Otherwise, the party could only “maintain martyr status”, similar to WadePhul’s group board colleague Jens Spahn had previously commented.

The SPD sees it differently. It was she who, from 2021, in the traffic light coalition together with the Greens and FDP of the AfD in the Bundestag in the Bundestag. And it is she who is now pushing to keep it that way in the new election period. Spahn’s statements are “outrageous and dangerous,” said party leader Saskia Esken.

For many Social Democrats, the Großklat also reverberates from the end of January, as the Union, FDP and AfD, together in the Bundestag, decided to apply for a sharper migration policy. “I hope that the Union faction does not declare the AfD as a normal party, but develops a clear attitude again,” said SPD MP Elisabeth Kaiser, who belongs to the board of the parliamentary left star.

The occupation of the committees is therefore part of a fundamental strategic conflict. Because WadePhul and Spahn are not only members of the parliamentary group. They represent a growing current in the CDU, which pleads for a more pragmatic handling of the AfD and already has a majority in the East German state associations.

“The AfD is a right -wing extremist party, it wants to abolish democracy,” said at the same time. This excludes cooperation or even a coalition. But: The party’s democratic rights should remain unaffected.

The supporters of a softer line point out that the AfD has already provided three committee chair in the legislature from 2017 to 2021, as well as they now take these functions in several state parliament. In addition, it is undemocratic to de facto to refuse a parliamentary party.

This type of exclusion is “simply borderline,” said a CDU member of the Bundestag star. In the end, it endangers the reputation of the other parties.

The opponents, who, however, become less in the Union faction, warn of normalizing the AfD. They point out that the party has continued to radicalize since the first parliamentary term and that the protection of the constitution is now classified as a “right -wing extremist suspicion”.

In addition, in 2019, the defense of the then legal committee chairman Stephan Brandner showed for the first time that the AfD’s personnel proposals could not be trusted. The same applies to the recent election of the head of the Constitutional Committee, Alexander Wiesner, in the Saxon state parliament.

Especially if the protection of the constitution is the entire AfD-as before-as the state associations of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia-re-enacted, the debate about a ban on party could begin again. A choice of AfD chiefs would counteract this from the start.

Formally, the processes are clearly regulated. If Merz is elected Chancellor and has appointed his cabinet, the committees are distributed. As the largest opposition faction, the AfD is entitled to the budget committee. After that, the Union is allowed to access the largest government faction, then the Green Group, then the SPD and finally the left. And then it starts again.

When the committees constituted the following, it was once common for the personnel proposals of the respective political groups to be confirmed. But since the AfD moved in, the chief posts had had to be elected in the committees due to it – and remained vacant in case of doubt.

And so this time there should be up to six voting dramas. In theory, the general rule applies to the Union and the SPD and in the coalition agreement: “In the German Bundestag and in all committees he has a fold, the coalition fractions are uniform.” But the elections are practical.

In the end, the result could also depend on whom the AfD is. Beyond the budget committee, for the chair of which AfD MP Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing wants to compete, there is still no reliable information. The speculation is speculated about the interior committee, Kay Gottschalk for the Finance Committee or René Springe for the Social Committee.

In the AfD faction you are careful. “Anyone who now talks about committee precursors is doing pure speculation,” said Springer that star. “We decide as soon as the award procedure is completed – not before.” The parliamentary managing director Bernd Baumann also told the star: “Group board and parliamentary group assembly also determine the strategy.”

Basically, however, Springer considers everything possible in the secret votes. He is eagerly awaiting whether the Union has “enough backbone” this time to choose an AfD committee chairman, he said, “or whether it buckles back in front of the SPD and is covered behind the fire wall”.

From the AfD’s point of view, she can only win again. Either one or even more of their candidates come through in the secret votes, which would upgrade the party and at the same time split the new coalition. Or the victim narrative is strengthened, with the result that the Union continues to lose to the AfD.

The parliamentary parliamentary group manager Baumann summarizes the situation for his party as follows: “However, some CDulers are now dawning at how much the fire wall uses the left -wing green, but harms its own party.”