CDU politician calls for AfD ban proceedings after events in Thuringia state parliament

In view of the events in the Thuringian state parliament, CDU member of the Bundestag and former Commissioner for Eastern Europe Marco Wanderwitz is calling for the AfD to be banned. "The AfD's appearance in the Thuringian state parliament once again followed the script of disparaging parliamentary democracy and its institutions," Wanderwitz told the daily newspaper "taz". The AfD is doing this in a planned and effective manner. "There is an urgent need for a ban procedure at the Federal Constitutional Court, as provided for in Article 21 of the Basic Law," said the Saxon MP.

In the turbulent first session of the state parliament, Thuringia's Interior Minister Georg Maier (SPD) had already identified further evidence for the possibility of an AfD ban procedure. The events had shown that the AfD was aggressively combating parliamentarianism, he wrote on the X portal.

AfD rejects accusations

The parliamentary director of the AfD parliamentary group, Torben Braga, rejected the accusations. "If a parliamentary group behaved in such a way in yesterday's session of the state parliament that an aggressive attitude towards parliamentary democracy became clear and caused damage to the institution of the state parliament and democracy, then it was certainly not the AfD," he said in a statement.

The constituent session of the Thuringian state parliament ended on Thursday after several hours with a scandal. It was interrupted and the CDU parliamentary group appealed to the Constitutional Court to have the procedures clarified. The background to this is a dispute over the procedure for electing a state parliament president. The Thuringian parliament is now deemed unable to work for the time being. The session is to continue on Saturday.