Wagenknecht group to form in the Bundestag next week
Following her resignation from the Left Party, Sahra Wagenknecht and nine other MPs want to form their own group in the Bundestag next week. On December 12, the "Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance" will be properly constituted in the Bundestag and will then also apply for group status, a spokeswoman told the German Press Agency.
Wagenknecht and her nine comrades-in-arms left the Left Party in October. As a result, the previous Left Party parliamentary group, which most recently had 38 members, will also disband on December 6. The remaining 28 Left Party MPs have already submitted an application to form their own group and are hoping for swift recognition by the Bundestag. A resolution by the plenary is required to define the rights of a new group in parliamentary operations.
Compared to a parliamentary group, a group has fewer parliamentary rights, for example when putting questions to the government. And it receives less financial support from the state coffers. Whether the Bundestag will decide on both groups - the Left Party and the Wagenknecht Group - in parallel remains to be seen. It is also unclear how both groups will be positioned in the plenary chamber in future.
With the dissolution of the Left Party parliamentary group, 108 employees will lose their jobs, for example political advisors or office staff. How many of them will be employed by the new groups in future also depends on their financial resources. It will probably not be all of them.
Read also:
- Sahra Wagenknecht and her group of nine MPs aim to formalize their alliance as a new group in the Bundestag during the weekly session starting next week.
- The Bundestag will need to pass a resolution to define the parliamentary rights of the newly formed Wagenknecht group, similar to what the remaining Left Party MPs applied for due to their group's disbandment.
- The Wagenknecht group is expected to have fewer privileges than the previous Left Party parliamentary group, including less financial support from government funds and reductions in question-asking opportunities towards the government.
Source: www.ntv.de
