Germany: AfD loses appeal on chairing Bundestag committees

Parliamentary committees in the Bundestag  are free to choose their chairpersons and free to vote against Alternative for Germany (AfD) candidates, Germany's Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday. 

The panel of judges unanimously ruled that the far-right party did not have an automatic or guaranteed right to chair any committees, even though under traditional conventions in Germany the party's current strength would typically mean that it chairs three of them. 

It also ruled that the members of the Legal Affairs Committee acted within their rights in 2019 when voting out AfD chairman Stephan Brandner.

In so doing, the court shot down a pair of appeals from the AfD, which argued that not chairing any of the committees at present unfairly reduces its influence.

What are parliamentary committees in the Bundestag? 

As in many other comparable democracies, Germany's parliament has special committees for an array of major policy areas, from foreign affairs to environmental policy, tourism and even digitalization. 

Membership in the committees is weighted to reflect the relative strengths of the parties in parliament. They serve as a forum for in-depth policy discussion and scrutiny, and sometimes have access to sensitive information not publicly available. 

One of their main tasks is presenting reports on areas in their competence to the rest of the parliament ahead of votes on new government legislation. These reports typically follow investigation within the committee, often including testimony from outside experts. 

Although their powers tend to be fairly modest, they are sometimes seen to have a meaningful influence on policy. To take one recent example, the Defense Committee in the Bundestag and its then-chairwoman Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann were credited in 2022 and early 2023 with helping to press the German government to provide more weaponry to Ukraine more quickly.

Given that Germany's other political parties refuse to cooperate with the AfD, consigning it to the opposition, the committee chair positions would be among the more senior posts in the Bundestag that the party could occupy at present.

Why do no AfD politicians currently chair them? 

Conventionally, the relative strength of the political parties in parliament decided which ones would chair which committees. Candidates would then be put forward by the party in question, and generally approved by the members of the committee.

This tradition buckled late in 2019 when members of the Legal Affairs Committee voted to oust chairman Stephan Brandner, an AfD member. Members said this was a response to Brandner making a series of comments they deemed unworthy of the office, accusing him of using the position for party political purposes.

The court said on Wednesday that given Brandner's series of controversial comments, the committee's decision was unprecedented but had not been random or indiscriminate. The court said it would have only been warranted to intervene if the action had had no underlying factual basis.

After Germany's last national election in 2021, the AfD's improved performance meant it would normally qualify to head three committees — domestic affairs, health and development policy.

But in each case, members voted against the AfD candidate and instead appointed caretaker chairpersons from other parties. In another break from tradition, again criticized by the AfD, the votes were made anonymously.

The Constitutional Court in Karlrushe on Wednesday ruled that the committee members did not overreach and that such actions are part of their powers as defined by the Bundestag's rules of procedure.

It said that while equal and fair representation was assured in a number of ways, most notably the numbers of lawmakers in Germany's various parliaments, this did not necessarily extend to the top spot on parliamentary committees.

The AfD's Brandner called the ruling a "black day for parliamentary politics," but also called it a "pyrrhic victory" for mainstream parties, saying that in the long term, "majorities can change." 

The anti-migration party is hoping to follow up its strong showing in state elections in Saxony and Thuringia with another successful vote on Sunday in the eastern German state of Brandenburg.

msh/sms (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

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