German parliament sits for first time with AfD as main opposition
Germany's new parliament sits for the first time on Tuesday with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) the strongest opposition faction, as negotiators seek to iron out key differences on tax and migration that are likely to dominate a new coalition government under Friedrich Merz.
The 630 members of the Bundestag, 230 of whom are newly elected, will sit in parliament at a unique time in postwar German history. The AfD has doubled its number of seats to 152, while centrist parties are overhauling the country's military and fiscal policy in response to rising threats to European security.
The MPs taking seats on Tuesday range in age from 23 to 84. The youngest is Luke Hoss, a student from the far-left Die Linke who has promised to give away most of his €11,000-a-month salary. The oldest is Alexander Gauland, a former journalist from the AfD who in 2018 downplayed Hitler and the Nazis as 'just birdshit in our more than 1,000-year history'.
The new parliament contains about 100 fewer MPs than the previous one after the outgoing government reformed Germany's electoral law to shrink persistent bloat. Fewer than a third of MPs in the new Bundestag are women, slightly below the share in the previous legislature.
The gender inequality is lowest in the Greens, where women make up 61.2% of MPs, and highest in the AfD, where they make up 11.8%. Women are also greatly underrepresented in the centre right, accounting for 22.6% of MPs in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and 25% of MPs in the Christian Social Union (CSU).
Lawmakers of foreign descent are also disproportionately rare in the new parliament. The share of MPs with a migration background – those with at least one parent who was born without German citizenship – is 11.6%, according to estimates from the nonprofit group Mediendienst Integration, compared to about 30% in the general population.
Zada Salihović, a 24-year-old from Die Linke who has become the second-youngest MP in the Bundestag after Hoss, said the new parliament was 'still a reflection of a privileged minority' that did not adequately represent women, workers, young people, eastern Germans and people with migrant backgrounds.
'It's not a coincidence, it's an expression of structural barriers and power relations,' she said. 'When parliaments are so homogeneous, it's not only the perspective of the majority that's missing – there's also a lack of fair solutions.'
The first sitting will open with a speech from Gregor Gysi, the longest-serving member of parliament, who began his political career in the Socialist Unity party in communist East Germany. The 77-year-old will be free to decide the length and content of his speech, and will chair the session until the president of the Bundestag is elected.
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The CDU/CSU has nominated the CDU party treasurer, Julia Klöckner, to be Bundestag president, a position similar to that of the speaker in other countries. The Greens had protested after reports that Klöckner, the former agriculture minister under Angela Merkel, had planned to introduce herself to the AfD faction this week, arguing that it would 'send a wrong signal of normalisation'. Klöckner's presence at the meeting appeared to have been cancelled after scheduling conflicts, the news outlet Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland reported on Monday.
Tense coalition talks are under way between the CDU/CSU, the largest faction in parliament, and the Social Democratic party (SPD). The chancellor-in-waiting, Merz, hopes to form a government before Easter.
The probable incoming government scored an early win this month after securing the support of the Greens to amend the constitution and loosen Germany's debt brake. The proposal, which was approved on Friday by the Bundesrat, a legislative body akin to an upper house of parliament, paves the way for a debt-financed package of investments in defence, infrastructure and climate action.
The proposal would have probably failed to pass in the new parliament, which contains a 'blocking minority' from the AfD and Die Linke, who oppose sending weapons to Ukraine.
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