Loud yawning, booing, applause - if members of the parliament do not adhere to the rules of procedure, the chair of the session of the German Bundestag calls for orders and reprimands. According to a newspaper report, their number is currently at its highest level in decades. Since the 2017 election, the Bundestag has counted a total of 19 calls for orders, more than in all four previous legislative periods combined, the "Augsburger Allgemeine" reported, citing an existing list of the Bundestag administration and parliamentary minutes.
In 2019 alone, the Bundestag presidency issued eleven calls for orders and four reprimands against MPs. Most of the regulatory measures were related to the AfD, according to the report. They either directed directly against MPs from the party or members of other factions who responded with interjection to AfD speakers, Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki (FDP) told the newspaper. (Not only calls to order, but also cheerfulness can be counted: here you can read an evaluation of most laughs in the Bundestag)
Calls to orders are obviously justified
In the past few months, AfD parliamentarians have aimed "to make the parliamentary institutions and procedures contemptible through targeted provocations," criticized the FDP politician. To counteract this, the rules of procedure must be applied consistently. Every single one of the calls for orders was obviously justified, "because so far none of them has been contested in court".
In earlier times, however, things were much more hearty in the Bundestag than today. For the tenth parliamentary term from 1983 and 1987, when the Greens were represented in the Bundestag for the first time during the term of office of Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU) and often mixed up parliamentary activity, the Bundestag statistics recorded 132 calls for orders and twelve reprimands, according to the "Augsburger Allgemeine".