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Current and former leftists at a debate about the supplementary budget: New seating arrangements planned according to groups
Photo: Britta Pedersen/dpa
The Left lost its status as a parliamentary group in the Bundestag because Sahra Wagenknecht and her supporters left the party. This also has consequences for the seating arrangement in the Bundestag: the seat in the front row in the plenary hall, where the chairmen of the Left faction used to sit, will in future go to the SPD. This is what a proposal from the traffic light coalition envisages. This Friday, parliament is supposed to decide on the group status for the Left on the one hand and Wagenknecht's troops on the other.
If Wagenknecht or Dietmar Bartsch now want to take notes during a debate in the Bundestag, they will have to put the writing pad on their knees in the future - both for Bartsch and the remaining 27 left-wing MPs as well as for Wagenknecht and the nine other parliamentarians who have joined their alliance , there is no longer a table provided.
The future distribution of seats is also piquant: Viewed from the parliamentary presidium and the lectern, Wagenknecht's people should in future take the far left, with the left to the right. The latter would have liked it to be the other way around.
"In just a few weeks," says SPD parliamentary group leader Katja Mast, "in a fair process we managed to develop balanced and viable applications for the recognition of the two groups." However, the Union and AfD do not support the decision. And the left also takes exception to the traffic light plans, at least some of the requirements. SPIEGEL had already reported on some details.
It's planned:
A speaking time quota that the two groups can use flexibly. In principle, three minutes are allocated per debate for the Left and one for the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). But it is also possible to summarize speaking times.
The groups should be able to make large and small requests to the federal government - but no more than ten per month. The former left-wing parliamentary group leader Bartsch took exception to this and warned against a curtailment of parliamentary rights.
The groups also have the right to put current hours on the agenda of the Bundestag: the Left twice a year, the BSW once.
The plans go too far for the Union. "The Union's premise in all discussions was: group formation should not be worthwhile," said Thorsten Frei (CDU), Parliamentary Managing Director of the Union faction, to SPIEGEL. The groups should not be given more rights than they are entitled to under the constitution: "That's why the traffic light proposals cannot be approved." Frei said that the Union had suggested a hearing on the legal questions in the Rules Committee: "Unfortunately the coalition did not follow this .”