Erfurt (dpa/th) – Thuringia’s state parliament has changed the rules for the appointment of the state parliament commission, which controls the Thuringian protection of the constitution. A corresponding correction of the constitution protection law was decided on Wednesday in the state parliament with the votes of the red-red-green coalition and the FDP. The AfD voted against, the CDU and the group Bürger für Thüringen abstained.
The so-called parliamentary control commission is currently not fully staffed – the constitutional court in Weimar had already dealt with this situation. The reason for this is that the candidates proposed by the AfD did not find a majority in the state parliament in many ballots. In Thuringia, the AfD is being monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution because of right-wing extremist tendencies.
With the rule change based on the example of North Rhine-Westphalia, a blockade of the commission should be prevented in the future. So far, the five members of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution have been filled according to the strength of the parliamentary groups in the state parliament; in future, the opposition should be appropriately represented alongside the governing coalition. This means that members of parliament from individual parliamentary groups no longer have to be members of the control committee.
The Green MP Madeleine Henfling criticized the CDU parliamentary group, which had decided at the last moment to abstain from the vote. It was disputed whether the members of the control commission should be elected with a simple majority, as the CDU believed, or with a two-thirds majority. The AfD faction came in for heavy criticism of the new regulation.
