Bundestag: Left and BSW recognized as groups

KAlmost two months after the dissolution of the Left faction, the Bundestag recognized the Left and the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) as groups. On Friday, a majority of MPs voted for the corresponding resolution recommendations from the Council of Elders, the executive committee of the Bundestag, based on drafts from the traffic light factions.

The vote was preceded by a debate that was sometimes very heated. MPs from the Left and the BSW accused the government factions of wanting to severely restrict their opposition work through the new regulations. Representatives of the traffic light factions defended it as a “sensible middle ground” in order to ensure a sensible gradation between parliamentary groups, groups and non-attached MPs in parliamentary rights.

The Union and AfD criticized the regulations. The parliamentary manager of the Union parliamentary group, Thorsten Frei, pointed out that the Union wanted to prevent parliament from becoming fragmented. The AfD politician Stephan Brandner sharply attacked the government, the new groups and Bundestag Vice President Petra Pau, who belongs to the Left Party and chaired the meeting on Friday. Pau then gave Brandner a warning for denigrating the chairwoman.

The conflict over the new group rules focuses on capping small and large requests to a total of ten per month. The left-wing faction had made intensive use of its right to ask questions in the past. According to co-party leader Janine Wissler, in the current electoral period it represented 966 by the end of 2023.

Wissler told the FAZ with regard to the Bundestag's decision: Restricting the right to ask questions is “a really poor traffic light method” to prevent her party from “exposing their bad policies.” The answers to inquiries from the left provided important figures, meaning that the restriction also affects charities, NGOs, refugee councils, journalists and scientists.

Wissler added: “We will now have to carefully examine what legal steps there are.” She praised the fact that the group recognition had happened “relatively promptly”. Her party's goal is to return to the Bundestag as a parliamentary group in 2025. BSW MP Jessica Tatti also announced this goal for the newly founded party around former Left MP Sahra Wagenknecht and the former Left parliamentary group leader Amira Mohamed Ali.

The step of recognizing the Left and BSW as groups with 28 and ten MPs respectively became necessary after the Left faction dissolved on December 6th. This dissolution was preceded by the resignation of ten MPs led by Wagenknecht from the Left Party.