AfD candidates fail again in election to supervisory body

Ever since the AfD first entered Bavaria's state parliament five years ago, it has been trying to gain positions on the control committee of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The latest attempt was also unsuccessful.

, and ZEITUNG «AUSSIEDLERBOTE»

2023 December 2 . 1:43 PM

2 min read

View of the AfD party logo. Photo.aussiedlerbote.de

Parliament - AfD candidates fail again in election to supervisory body

As in the previous legislature, the AfD 's candidates for the election of the Parliamentary Control Committee failed at the start of the new legislative period. Neither the newly elected AfD MP Jörg Baumann nor his parliamentary group colleague Stefan Löw received the necessary number of votes in the secret ballot on Thursday. This was Löw's third unsuccessful attempt to obtain a position on the committee. Since the AfD entered the state parliament in 2018, 15 AfD MPs have unsuccessfully applied for election to the committee.

In contrast, the state parliament elected the three CSU MPs Steffen Vogel, Alfred Grob and Holger Dremel to the Parliamentary Control Committee (PKG), as well as Wolfgang Hauber (Free Voters), Katharina Schulze (Greens) and Horst Arnold (SPD).

Each parliamentary group is entitled to at least one seat on the PKG, depending on its size. Among other things, the PKG monitors the work of the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is why its members are subject to a special duty of confidentiality. According to the law, the committee consists of seven members of parliament. Appointment is normally a formality.

The AfD had already taken legal action against the non-election of its candidates to the PKG in the last legislature - so far also without success. The AfD is also not represented on the Bundestag's supervisory body for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Filling a PKG position with an AfD politician would be controversial, as the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has the state AfD in its sights. It was only in April that the Munich Administrative Court ruled that the state AfD may continue to be monitored - albeit not by intelligence services. For its part, the AfD sees the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as an authority that is supposed to "silence" voices critical of the government.

The AfD also expressed such criticism this time in the state parliament - MP Markus Walbrunn accused the other parliamentary groups of using undemocratic means to deliberately disadvantage the AfD. "Finally take the will of the voters seriously," he said and made no secret in his speech of his rejection of what he saw as a politically instrumentalized security authority.

In contrast, the speakers from the CSU, Free Voters, SPD and Greens emphasized in unison that no MP was forced to vote for an AfD candidate. Instead, the PKG needs members who have integrity and stand on the ground of the democratic basic order.