Brandenburg: State parliament member Oliver Skopec leaves the BSW parliamentary group

The Brandenburg BSW state parliamentary group is shrinking again: State parliament member Oliver Skopec is leaving the group and the party. He announced this on Tuesday. This means that the former 14-member group only has eight members instead of nine. The 41-year-old justifies his move with the character of the BSW as a protest party. “For me personally, that’s not enough.” He wants to keep his state parliament mandate and continue as an independent and non-party member.

According to the MP, it is a crossroads: “Do we want to be primarily a protest party or do we want to become a shaping party at some point?” said Skopec. The BSW has decided that it wants to be a “left-wing anti-establishment party”. “I see the BSW as a loud protest party.” However, he would like concrete solutions. “Unfortunately, I no longer see this step from protest to design coming to the BSW.”

According to his own statements, the MP continues to support his former party in terms of content. "My departure is not a political change of sides. I'm not leaving the BSW in anger either," said Skopec. From his point of view, the BSW is on the rise after entering the state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt: "For me, it's not a dead horse that I don't want to ride anymore. It's a horse that rumbles and climbs on the spot, and I would like one that runs off and shows what it can do."

BSW parliamentary group leader Niels-Olaf Lüders tried to demonstrate composure. “The fact that he is now leaving is regrettable, but of course that doesn’t upset us,” said Lüders. “The BSW has a lot of tailwind at the moment and Mr. Skopec’s decision doesn’t change that.”

Since the exit takes place a few days before the elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, he concludes that someone is “following the example of Thuringia with their own agenda.” Skopec had his problems “here and there” with the party’s course. “We tried many conversations to find each other anyway.”

BSW state chairwoman Friederike Benda does not see the departure as a loss. “The fact that the wheat is separated from the chaff will benefit us,” explained Benda. She accused him of using the parliamentary mandate “as a comfortable, state-financed rest pillow” at the expense of the taxpayer.

It is another exit in a series: In November 2025, four members of the BSW parliamentary group left the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). Skopec criticized this step at the time. When ex-state leader Robert Crumbach left the party and parliamentary group in January, the only SPD/BSW coalition in the country collapsed. A total of five MPs left the parliamentary group and the BSW at that time, Crumbach and Jouleen Gruhn switched to the SPD parliamentary group. In Thuringia, the 15-member BSW faction recently dissolved.

Three of the four Brandenburg ex-BSW MPs have now founded the group “We for Brandenburg”. Skopec, an independent entrepreneur from Woltersdorf (Oder-Spree district), was briefly discussed as BSW federal deputy last year. He is currently a member of the Petitions Committee and the Study Commission on Local Transport. He left it open whether Skopec would join the group of three ex-BSW MPs at some point: “We will certainly talk to each other.”