By Thomas Escritt
BERLIN (Reuters) -The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) took up its largest-ever share of the seats as Germany’s new parliament met for its first session on Tuesday, demanding commensurate influence in a Bundestag facing the biggest diplomatic and economic crisis in decades.
The AfD came second in the February 23 election, the best performance by a far-right party since World War Two, helped by years of economic underperformance and uncertainty caused by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Within minutes, the AfD group demanded that its former leader Alexander Gauland, the oldest member, should open the session as Father of the House, rather than Left party’s Gregor Gysi, the longest-serving member. The rules were changed in 2017 specifically to stop an AfD member opening parliament.
“Your tricks won’t prevent our rise,” said AfD parliamentary leader Bernd Baumann.
Gysi, a criminal defence lawyer in East Germany who later headed the successor to the Communist Party, rebuked AfD politician Stephan Brandner for branding other parties’ rejection of its motions “repulsive and contemptible”.
The AfD group is not just twice as large as before, with 152 seats, but contains lawmakers who have expressed more extreme views.
Maximilian Krah, who joins from the European Parliament, caused French far-right leader Marine Le Pen to abandon the AfD after his failure to repudiate Adolf Hitler’s murderous paramilitary SS in a newspaper interview.
Krah’s rehabilitation – he was excluded from the party’s benches in Brussels – underlines the party’s growing self-confidence as it narrows the gap between it and the election-winning conservatives.
Mathias Helferich, an ally of Bjoern Hoecke, leader of the party’s most radical wing, entered parliament in 2021 but was excluded from the party’s benches after messages were leaked in which he described himself as “the friendly face of the Nazis” – though he later said this was meant as a joke. He has now been readmitted in full standing.
The one-time libertarian party of anti-euro economists has shifted far to the nativist right since its 2013 founding, opposing Muslim immigration, leaning towards Russia in the war against Ukraine and demanding the European Union’s abolition.
Several new members have military backgrounds, many are close to Hoecke and one was previously in the banned far-right NPD party. Another is a secondary school history teacher.
COMMUNIST SUCCESSORS
The new parliament takes shape after two consecutive years of economic contraction and nerves about Germany’s and Europe’s response to the Ukraine war and Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
That uncertainty also boosted the Left, brought back from near oblivion to record its best electoral performance in years.
The AfD’s formal powers will be limited.
But the compromises conservative leader Friedrich Merz has had to make to pass a debt package with the help of the Social Democrats, his intended coalition partner, and the Greens, have helped the AfD. Polls showed the AfD gaining ground on Merz and only 56% of his own supporters thinking he would effectively stand up for Germany against Trump.
Legislators elected his candidate Julia Kloeckner, a conservative former agriculture minister and wine journalist, president of parliament, who scolded the AfD for dismissing as a “cartel” coalitions of mainstream parties.
“Democratically-formed majorities are not cartels,” she said.
With 24% of seats in the 630-member parliament, a rowdy AfD made itself heard during the session, another way in which it can test the broad “firewall” against political cooperation with the far-right that has long held sway among mainstream parties.
A court ruled earlier this month that the parliamentary football team could no longer exclude the AfD’s legislators from its ranks.
While many legislators refuse even to acknowledge in the corridors legislators from a party they regard as undemocratic and anti-constitutional, a fresh generation of activist lawmakers say that approach has run out of road.
“My differences with them are political, not personal,” said Ferat Kocak, who became the first Left lawmaker to win a seat in the former West Germany in the election. “I was in a lift with one the other day and I said: ‘Salam alaykum'”.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Toby Chopra, Matthias Williams and Alex Richardson)
