The interior minister of Germany’s state of Thuringia has called for banning the Alternative for Germany (AfD), after a tumultuous opening session of the state parliament.
“Events in the Thuringian state parliament have shown that the AfD is aggressively combating parliamentarians,” Georg Maier, the acting interior minister, wrote on X.
The September 26 opening session was riddled with conflict, interrupted on several occasions, and ended prematurely, amid clashes between the AfD and other parties.
“The potential for a party ban and actions for violating Article 1 of the Constitution have long been undisputed in the case of the AfD,” the minister added.
“I already expressed my thoughts on this in December 2023. Today shows that I was not entirely wrong,” said Maier, who is a Social Democratic Party (SDP) member.
Die heutigen Ereignisse im Thüringer Landtag haben gezeigt, dass die #AfD aggressiv kämpferisch gegen den Parlamentarismus vorgeht. Ich denke, dass damit die Voraussetzungen für ein Verbotsverfahren gegeben sind. 1/3
— Georg_Maier (@GeorgMaier8) September 26, 2024
The AfD’s behaviour during the session was “an attack on parliamentary rights, on the constitution and on every single member of parliament,” agreed Thuringia’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) parliamentary group leader Mario Voigt.
The AfD’s Jürgen Treutler, who at 73 years old was Thuringia’s oldest lawmaker, was serving as the acting chair, tasked with selecting the body’s president and vice-president and assigning members to committees.
Treutler used his speech to say the chamber’s president should be from his own party, as the largest parliamentary group.
In Thuringia, along with other German states, it is customary for the state parliament’s largest political group to receive key leadership roles, including the parliament presidency.
Other parties, however, objected to the possibility of an AfD president, and demanded a rule change to prevent such a nomination.
Fifteen minutes into the session, the parliament’s Christian Democrats began a discussion on the presence of a quorum, normally a formality.
This prompted a first clash between group leaders and Treutler, who wanted to complete his speech first.
The CDU’s members soon after interrupted again, accusing Treutler of not adhering to the rules.
The session quickly then became a shouting match, as frustrated members clashed with other parties, with a series of ensuing suspensions of the session.
As the parties debated their interpretations of the rules of procedure, the CDU, Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), SPD, and Die Linke parties accused the AfD of abusing its position in order to “seize power”.
Those parties, which together formed a majority, pushed for a vote on amending the rules of procedure—which Treutler used his role as chair to block.
With no agreement reached, the meeting was adjourned until September 28, while the Constitutional Court determined the legality of the decisions Treutler had already made.
Florian Post, a former Social Democratic Party member who subsequently joined the Christian Democrats, called his current party’s tactics “a serious mistake”.
“Rules of procedure are changed after the state parliament is constituted, and this is completed with the election of the president of the state parliament and not before,” said Post.
The rules of procedure could have been changed in one of the final sessions before the state election, as the Bundestag had done before the 2017 election, he added.
Instead, the CDU’s antics in the Thuringian Parliament were “completely stupid and idiotic”, and benefited the AfD, he said.
“By the way: you don’t have to like it, but the AfD won this election! If you want to change that in the next election, you should be smarter and at least take note of the election result,” Post concluded.
“The AfD showed its true face. It is not a party like any other. Its members of parliament are intent on undermining the democratic system,” Die Welt wrote.
The episode showed “how aggressively combative the AfD is”, according to weekly magazine Der Spiegel.
“The right-wing extremist AfD … pulled out all the stops on Thursday to play off its new power—and to attack parliamentary democracy,” Der Spiegel added.
