End of the left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag - Bartsch: "Look to the future"
The previous parliamentary group is now going into liquidation. The remaining Left Party MPs have already applied to form a group in the Bundestag, and the MPs around Wagenknecht want to do the same. The parliamentary group took the decision to dissolve itself in mid-November. The left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag was founded in September 2005.
With the end of its status as a parliamentary group, the Left Party will lose financial support from the Bundestag budget. This budget is primarily used to finance the staff of the parliamentary groups - in the case of the Left Party, this means more than one hundred positions. The loss of parliamentary group status also has disadvantages when it comes to the allocation of speaking time in plenary and appointments to committees.
Bartsch told the RND newspapers: "We will still be able to employ some of the staff as a group, but in the end there will be significantly fewer of them because the global subsidies for the parliamentary group will be missing in future." The group around Wagenknecht bears responsibility for this. She had accepted "that our people would be made redundant before Christmas", said Bartsch.
On RBB, Bartsch described the end of the left-wing parliamentary group as a "historic defeat". He was also "personally disappointed". Now the main focus must be on "ensuring that we are back in the Bundestag as a parliamentary group in 2025. That is the goal".
On ARD's "Morgenmagazin", Bartsch said that the remaining Left Party MPs must now fulfill the voters' mandate to be the social opposition in the Bundestag. The Left Party wants to increasingly represent East German interests again. "This is an important task that we have somewhat neglected," said Bartsch.
Left Party MP Pau confirmed her intention to remain in her office as Vice-President of the Bundestag. "I have been elected for this legislative period and I intend to fulfill this task," she told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Wednesday. Previously, there had been isolated demands from the CDU/CSU that Pau should also relinquish her position in the Bundestag presidium after the end of her parliamentary group. The AfD has put this topic on the Bundestag agenda for next week.
Pau said of the future work of the remaining Left Party members of the Bundestag: "The 28 of us will remain united and serious until the Bundestag hopefully recognizes us as a group and grants us group rights." The application to form a group had already been submitted to Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD) last Friday. The Bundestag will then have to vote on whether to recognize us as a group.
The MPs around Wagenknecht want to form themselves as a group next Tuesday and apply to the Bundestag for recognition in the near future.
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Source: www.stern.de
