DThe left-wing faction in the Bundestag wants to decide to dissolve it next week. This was announced by parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch on Tuesday evening after a parliamentary group meeting in Berlin. The background is the break with Sahra Wagenknecht and nine other MPs.
“We have decided that we will initiate liquidation next week,” said Bartsch. “The date on which this liquidation begins” will then be determined. He can’t give a date yet: “Next Tuesday I can tell you when that will happen.”
It was the group’s first meeting since Wagenknecht resigned from the party along with nine other MPs a good two weeks ago to found a new party at the beginning of next year. However, all ten MPs had submitted an application to remain in the group within 48 hours. The reason given was, among other things, responsibility for the more than 100 group employees who would lose their jobs if the group was dissolved.
Wissler: Get the transition done as quickly as possible
Even before the announcement by Wagenknecht and her colleagues, the parliamentary group with 38 MPs was only two resignations away from losing its parliamentary group status. Before the parliamentary group meeting, Bartsch advocated deciding calmly and together how the group should proceed. He repeated the assessment that the group was politically dead.
There were very different opinions among the remaining MPs about how things should proceed. While some advocated rejecting the motions of the ten breakaway MPs and thus deciding to end the parliamentary group immediately, others advocated retaining its status as a parliamentary group for a few more weeks – because of the employees and in order to be more present in the upcoming Bundestag debates . Accordingly, one should initially have decided on a fixed date on which the liquidation of the faction would begin.
While Bartsch pointed out on Tuesday before the parliamentary group meeting that there was no need to decide on the motions of the ten MPs, party leader Janine Wissler said on Monday: “It is completely clear to me that this is of course not a tenable situation.” She said: “We now have to make the transition as quickly as possible.” By the time the MPs around Wagenknecht are members of a new party from January onwards, the parliamentary group will inevitably dissolve.
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