Enlarge image
"It's not fun to sit next to the AfD": Members of the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag (archive picture from 2017)
Photo: Wolfgang Kumm / dpa
When the AfD first moved into the Bundestag in 2017, it quickly became clear where it was sitting: on the far right.
However, a parliamentary group had to take a seat next to the right in the plenary hall - it became the FDP.
Now the Liberals want to change the seating arrangements in the Bundestag in a possible traffic light coalition and move their seats next to the Greens into the middle of Parliament.
"If it comes to coalition negotiations, it would be an option to also address the issue of seating arrangements on the sidelines," said Deputy FDP parliamentary group leader Stephan Thomae of the "Augsburger Allgemeine".
"We would have liked to clarify it now in the council of elders, but that was not possible," Thomae told the newspaper.
In the constituent session of the Bundestag, the seating arrangement will therefore still be the old one in the absence of a new regulation.
But then the seating arrangement could be changed.
So far, AfD and FDP have followed from right to left: the Union faction, the Greens, then the SPD and, on the far left, the left-wing faction.
According to Thomae's will, the Union and the FDP would swap in the future.
"It's not fun to sit next to the AfD"
"We have requested a new seating arrangement in the Bundestag and we hope that it will go through," Thomae told the newspaper.
The new council of elders, in which the changed majorities would be reflected, must decide that quickly.
"It's not fun to sit next to the AfD," emphasized the FDP politician.
Female members of the FDP parliamentary group often had to listen to vulgar, sexually suggestive comments from the ranks of the AfD, reported Thomae.
"It also gets you involved in conversations you don't even want to have," he added.
"It's also about the symbolism," clarified the Liberal.
The FDP is the party of the bourgeois center, while the CDU and CSU define themselves to the right of the center.
The Union parliamentary group has so far rejected a change in the seating arrangement.
mrc / dpa