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Deadlock over Bundestag seating, as liberals refuse place next to AfD

The German constitution dictates that a new parliament's first session has to take place no later than 30 days after the election. But the parties still can’t decide on who is sitting where.

Published: 4 October 2017 16:57 CEST
Deadlock over Bundestag seating, as liberals refuse place next to AfD
Photo: DPA

The seating order in the 18th Bundestag (2013-2017) was simple. Die Linke, the successor party to the East German communists, went on the far left. The Social Democrats sat next to them, the Greens went in the middle, and Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Union went on the right. The seating thus reflected the parties’ positions on the political spectrum.

But things have been complicated for the 19th Bundestag by the arrival in parliament of the Free Democrats (FDP) and the far-right Alternative for Germany. While no one is disputing that the AfD will be seated on the very right of the plenum, conflict has arisen over where the FDP should go.

At a meeting held on Wednesday, representatives of all six parties met to thrash out the seating order. But no consensus could be met after the FDP rejected the plan to put them next to the AfD.

The pro-business party are determined to be placed in the centre of the Bundestag.

FDP MP Marco Buschmann told Spiegel that the party “belongs in the middle of the parliament” and that sitting there is a question of “great symbolic importance.”

The FDP have pointed to the fact that in state parliaments they have traditionally sat in the middle between the Green party and the Christian Union. On the other hand, the last time they were represented in the national parliament they sat to the right of Angela Merkel's Union.

Party representatives will meet again on October 13th to try and find a solution to the deadlock.

At the national election on September 24th the AfD won 12.6 percent of the vote, making them the third largest party in the Bundestag. It is the first time that a party further to the right on the political spectrum than the Christian Union has made it into the parliament since the late 1940s.

Despite the FDP and the CDU talking tough during election campaigning on the AfD's main political focal point – immigration – neither party is keen to be associated with the upstart party.

Both FDP and Christian Union have ruled out forming a coalition with the AfD. As the SPD have also ruled out joining the next government, a coalition deal between the Union, the FDP and the Green party is the only viable option.

SEE ALSO: These 7 quotes perfectly sum up the German election

POLITICS

Scholz says attacks on deputies ‘threaten’ democracy

Leading politicians on Saturday condemned an attack on a European deputy with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party, after investigators said a political motive was suspected.

Published: 5 May 2024 08:34 CEST
Scholz says attacks on deputies 'threaten' democracy

Scholz denounced the attack as a “threat” to democracy and the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also sounded the alarm.

Police said four unknown attackers beat up Matthias Ecke, an MEP for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), as he put up EU election posters in the eastern city of Dresden on Friday night.

Ecke, 41, was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said. Police confirmed he needed hospital treatment.

“Democracy is threatened by this kind of act,” Scholz told a congress of European socialist parties in Berlin, saying such attacks result from “discourse, the atmosphere created from pitting people against each other”.

“We must never accept such acts of violence… we must oppose it together.”

Borrell, posting on X, formerly Twitter, also condemned the attack.

“We’re witnessing unacceptable episodes of harassment against political representatives and growing far-right extremism that reminds us of dark times of the past,” he wrote.

“It cannot be tolerated nor underestimated. We must all defend democracy.”

The investigation is being led by the state protection services, highlighting the political link suspected by police.

“If an attack with a political motive… is confirmed just a few weeks from the European elections, this serious act of violence would also be a serious act against democracy,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

This would be “a new dimension of anti-democratic violence”, she added.

Series of attacks

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s EU election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police added that a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had earlier been “punched” and “kicked” in the same Dresden street. The same attackers were suspected.

Faeser said “extremists and populists are stirring up a climate of increasing violence”.

The SPD highlighted the role of the far-right “AfD party and other right-wing extremists” in increased tensions.

“Their supporters are now completely uninhibited and clearly view us democrats as game,” said Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, regional SPD leaders.

Armin Schuster, interior minister in Saxony, where an important regional vote is due to be held in September, said 112 acts of political violence linked to the elections have been recorded there since the beginning of the year.

Of that number, 30 were directed against people holding political office of one kind or another.

“What is really worrying is the intensity with which these attacks are currently increasing,” he said on Saturday.

On Thursday two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and one was hit in the face, police said.

Last Saturday, dozens of demonstrators surrounded parliament deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt, also a Greens lawmaker, in her car in eastern Germany. Police reinforcements had to clear a route for her to get away.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

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