WWhen the AfD is denied a position, it usually goes to court. The party has tried this way several times to achieve what it considers to be its rights. Sometimes it was about the Presidium of the Bundestag, sometimes about the body that controls the work of the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution. So far, she has experienced defeats in all of these cases, including before the Constitutional Court. However, the relevant questions had not yet been discussed orally there. There was an opportunity to do this on Tuesday when it came to a lawsuit by the AfD against the removal of Stephan Brandner as chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee – against the first removal in the history of the Bundestag.

The AfD parliamentary group is also complaining about the fact that its candidates did not even become chairmen of the committees for home affairs, economic cooperation and development and the health committee in the current electoral period. Among other things, she feels that her right to equal treatment has been violated.

The Karlsruhe hearing gave the judges an opportunity to “deal with the questions of electing and de-electing committee chairmen for the first time,” as Doris König said at the beginning. She is Vice President of the Court and Chairwoman of the Second Senate. For the AfD, it was even about the “legitimization of state power” through “the election of the people to the Bundestag,” as their legal representative Michael Elicker said. This is also expressed at the working level of Parliament, i.e. in the committees.

The AfD should not be able to declare itself a victim

Parliament’s decisions are prepared there. Committees did the “basic technical work,” said König. One could also speak of the “core of the parliamentary legislative process”. The composition of the committees should therefore reflect the majority. The committee chairmen, in turn, are responsible for impartially ensuring that the meetings run smoothly. They prepare the meetings, invite people to them, and manage the business. Their naming also depends on the majority, but there is hardly anything standardized about this.

According to the Bundestag's rules of procedure, the committees “determine” their chairmen. Traditionally, the chairmanship of the budget committee belongs to the largest opposition faction. Then it goes in turn according to the faction strengths. For the most part, elections didn't even take place for decades; the candidates were chosen in the committee by “acclamation”, by acclamation. The situation has always been different when committee members raised objections; then they should be allowed to vote. However, this practice had little relevance.

The “access procedure”, which was already practiced in 1912, has its origins in the fragmentation of a multi-party system at the time. Each party should be taken into account depending on the party's strengths. While committee chairmen in Great Britain and France are appointed by the majority, in Germany the aim was to avoid the government majority having organizational control in all committees. This is how a “finely woven system of mutual control and organizational barriers to power” developed, wrote Heinz-Willi Heynckes in the “Magazine for Parliamentary Questions” in 2019.