Home Affairs Committee debacle: first the person, then the country?

First the country, then the party, then the person, politicians like to assert.

Usually it is not true.

Anyone who knows the harshness of political business cannot blame anyone for thinking of themselves.

But that must not lead to damage to the country.

And that's exactly what happened now.

It was about the distribution of the committee chairs.

According to the access procedure, the parliamentary groups vote in turn, the largest begins.

The AfD could hardly believe that the Interior Committee was still available in the first round and the Health Committee in the second round.

The AfD is the fifth largest group, four were ahead of her.

The SPD, as the strongest parliamentary group, decided in the first round for the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Union for the Budget Committee, the Greens for the Europe Committee, and the FDP for the Defense Committee.

They followed their egoisms

There had been discussions among the groups beforehand.

One had made each other aware of the danger that the AfD, which is partially observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, will then lead the meetings in which right-wing extremist networks are discussed and constitutional protection officers are questioned.

The factions followed their egoisms with sight.

In the SPD and Union, the decisions are still understandable.

The Social Democrats provide the interior minister; it is parliamentary custom that a party does not pull the committee if it is already occupying the ministry.

That is not mandatory, in the last legislative period the interior committee chairman and interior minister were from the CSU.

It is also common for the largest opposition faction to chair the Committee on Budgets, that is, the Union.

In the case of the Greens and the FDP, there was no good reason for the decision: It was about supplying two politicians who were left empty-handed when the ministerial offices were awarded. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann from the FDP, who will head the Defense Committee, is well versed in this area. That cannot be said of Anton Hofreiter, who absolutely wanted the European Committee. Nobody is fooling the former group leader of the Greens in environmental policy, but he had nothing to do with Europe.

The Interior Committee would have been an opportunity for the Greens to gain credibility in the area of ​​internal security. Since they occupy neither the Ministry of the Interior nor the Ministry of Justice, they could have set a civic scent mark here. The European Committee has not played an important role so far. Hofreiter should help the presidency to position itself as a candidate for the EU commissioner, who the Greens can propose in 2024. The party let him go. Apparently there was too much concern that the fighting that had broken out in the dispute over the occupation of the ministerial posts could cause further damage.

The traffic light parties had no choice but to prevent an AfD interior committee chairman by voting.

The AfD candidates for the other committees also failed.

The AfD has new nourishment for its victim myth.

One should also not forget that Karlsruhe watches over the rights of the opposition.

The matter could take bitter revenge at some point.