Germany’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday dismissed a complaint by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which alleged the party’s exclusion from parliamentary committees.
The ruling concerns two lawsuits brought by the party’s parliamentary group, which holds 77 of the 733 seats in the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house.
Judge Doris König, deputy president of the Karlsruhe district court, explained that the rules for the selection and dismissal of committee chairs fall within the competence of the Bundestag.
The AfD had filed a complaint after traditional parties colluded to exclude its MPs from chairing three committees – health, interior and development – in the Bundestag after the 2021 elections.
Bundestag committees are reconstituted in each legislative period. Normally, the nomination of committee chairs is negotiated in the Council of Elders – a panel of about two dozen senior and experienced legislators.
If no agreement is reached, such as after the September 2021 parliamentary elections in which Chancellor Olaf Scholz held the highest office, an order of priority for the allocation will be calculated based on the strength of the factions.
This resulted in the AfD getting the three chairs, but opposition from other parties forced votes that saw the far-right candidates lose. As a result, the vice-chairs currently lead the committees.
The second lawsuit concerned the dismissal of AfD lawmaker Stephan Brandner as chair of the Legal Affairs Committee in November 2019.
The AfD claimed that its right to equal treatment as a parliamentary group and to fair application of the Bundestag’s procedural rules had been violated, but the court has now dismissed the complaint.
