The AfD won more than 20 percent of the vote and secured 152 seats to become the biggest opposition party in the Bundestag, which entitles it to chair several committees. Those posts hold real power because committee chairs steer debates, summon expert witnesses and influence the legislative agenda.<\/p>\n
\u2018Voters wanted to tell us something\u2019<\/p>\n
The CDU\u2019s Friedrich Merz is set to become chancellor once a governing coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) gets to work next month. <\/p>\n
CDU heavyweight Jens Spahn, a former health minister, told Bild<\/a> that the AfD should be treated \u201cin parliamentary procedures and processes like any other opposition party.\u201d He said its MPs were \u201csitting there in such strength because voters wanted to tell us something\u201d and that \u201cwe should take these voters seriously.\u201d Bild is owned by POLITICO\u2019s parent company, Axel Springer.<\/p>\n Until now, the CDU and other mainstream parties, including the center-left SPD of outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have worked around this rule to keep the AfD out. It has been repeatedly blocked from holding the Bundestag vice presidency \u2014 a post historically granted by custom to each parliamentary group.<\/p>\n Johann Wadephul, deputy chair of the CDU\/CSU parliamentary group, said the blockade had helped the AfD claim victimhood. He now supports allowing AfD candidates to chair committees \u201cif they haven\u2019t behaved inappropriately in the past,\u201d he told RND<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Merz had already tested the waters during the election campaign \u2014 and received much criticism \u2014 by relying on AfD votes in parliament to push through a proposal on migration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The AfD won more than 20 percent of the vote and secured 152 seats to become the biggest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[33,2000,299,1945,11070,1824,17860,809],"class_list":{"0":"post-29834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-elections","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-friedrich-merz","12":"tag-german-politics","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-jens-spahn","15":"tag-negotiations"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114358215197246117","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}