Formal negotiations on a four-year coalition programme can begin only if the outcome of the preliminary talks, a 28-page policy document, passes a vote by 600 SPD delegates.
Both Merkel and Schulz will soon face the end of the political road if they do not come to an agreement. The AfD could then become the largest opposition party, which means a lot of influence in committees.
If the SPD is tied in the government, the AfD becomes the largest opposition faction, and can thus massively extend its power. The list of committees in which the AFD could preside in the future includes, among others, the important Committee on Budgets, the Committee on Internal Affairs, the Defense Committee, the Culture Committee, which is also responsible for the culture of remembrance of the Nazi regime.
On Wednesday afternoon, Parliament will meet to set up the specialised committees. The number of presidencies depends on the size of the faction. The 92-member AFD Group is expected to receive 3 of the 23 committee posts.
There are parliamentary traditions in the Bundestag. And one goes that the largest opposition party occupies the budget committee. Group leader Alice Weidel leaves no doubt about the claim of the party. “As the largest opposition party, as is now the case, they are always entitled to the speaker’s post of the Budget Committee,” she told ZDF. “That’s the way it has been done in the Federal Republic of Germany.”
The AfD could attract a lot of attention. The effect of the budget committee, also known as the “King’s Committee” in public, is enormous, says the left-wing politician Gesine Lötzsch. She has knowledge of the matter: over the past legislature, she has chaired the panel. “It’s of great interest who leads this committee,” she told n-tv.de. “When I was elected then, there was also some resistance.”
So the government factions have the say in the Budget Committee, which has to approve all government spending. Nevertheless, the chairperson can influence formal functions. For example, a committee chairman can artificially prolong the usually very busy agenda and thus prevent decisions. What the budget committee does not approve of one day can not be decided in plenary the next day. “Of course that’s one possibility,” says Lötzsch. However, she points out that political groups usually force the board to apply discipline at some point.
The committee chairman also has many representative tasks. To meet with ambassadors is one, and then there are international organisations, such as the UN Refugee Agency, which regularly ask for contact.
The head of the Committee on Budgets, as Head of Delegation, travels extensively abroad, trying to shape international relations and promote German interests. Representatives of the AfD sometimes refer to migrants as “invaders”. No less delicate could be the reception of a Greek delegation at the next round of negotiations for a new aid package. Party leader Jorg Meuthen repeatedly described the indebted southern European states as “red wine republics”.
According to an internal list from which the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” cited, the Baden-Württemberg delegate Marc Jongen is scheduled to preside over the Committee on the Holocaust Memorial as a “monument of shame”. Jongen is considered one of the intellectual heavyweights in the AfD and did his doctorate under Peter Sloterdijk
Jongen has discussed the migration crisis as the “civil defense against the invasion of the stressors”.
The AfD would be represented on the parliamentary control committee, which is responsible for the control of intelligence agencies. Roman Reusch, who was most recently Senior Attorney General in Berlin, could take over the task. Politicians of other factions had until recently expressed concern that the AfD could set up a candidate with alleged links to the identititarian movement.
According to FAZ Gottfried Curio, Beatrix von Storch, Bernd Baumann and Martin Hess have been nominated for the interior committee. As a favorite, the long-time police officer Hess based on his experience in the counterterrorism, has been named.
In the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Deputy Group Leader Roland Hartwig and Armin-Paulus Hampel appear as strong contenders, as the latter was a long-time foreign correspondent of the ARD.