The blackberry coalition made up of the CDU, BSW and SPD in Thuringia has to reposition itself: After a long dispute between BSW founder Sahra Wagenknecht and the Thuringian state chairwoman Katja Wolf, the state leadership and the majority of state parliament members have drawn a line - they are leaving the party. The state parliamentary group is to remain in its current strength of twelve members for the time being.
The state government wants to continue working, as Prime Minister Mario Voigt (CDU) explained. Deputy Prime Minister Wolf also committed to the coalition. But it won't be easy - and it's unclear what will happen next.
What do the departures mean for the majority?
So far, the coalition of CDU, BSW and SPD has had a stalemate with 44 of 88 seats in parliament and could not be outvoted by the opposition. That is now changing: 13 of 15 members of the state parliament have turned their backs on the BSW this week.
It was already announced at the beginning of the week that a member of parliament was leaving the party. In the middle of the week, three MPs announced their resignation from the party and also from the parliamentary group - this shrank from 15 to twelve members. A further nine MPs have now announced that they are leaving the party, but will remain in the group. This currently consists of twelve MPs, ten of whom have declared their resignation from the party, two of whom are critical of Prime Minister Voigt.
For the majority, this means that Voigt can now only count on 39 instead of 44 votes - but not all actors have positioned themselves yet. The three breakaway MPs who want to found a new group had at least already signaled that, in their view, there was the greatest overlap with the coalition. But that is not a guarantee of approval.
What's next for the state party and parliamentary group?
Wolf announced that the executive board would resign. The second state chairman, Gernot Süßmuth, has already announced that he is resigning from his position. MP Alexander Kästner brought up the idea of dissolving the parliamentary group and possibly founding a new one.
ARD correspondent Lars Singer said on tagesschau24 that there are basically two options for the parliamentary group: on the one hand, liquidation - but that would be time-consuming and complicated. "That's why another option seems quite realistic: You could rename yourself, that is, you would avoid liquidation, in principle give the faction a different name and thus actually be able to simply maintain and continue the entire construct."
Next week there should be another parliamentary group meeting of the BSW in its current form. It is possible that a decision will be made there as to what happens next with the state party.
BSW MP Anke Wirsing, who is also a member of the parliamentary group in the state parliament, has already criticized the move away from the party. She called the announced exit “high treason,” as MDR reports. Wirsing emphasized that she would under no circumstances become a member of a possible new parliamentary group and that she would not "bend politically."
How would that be assessed legally?
If the MPs continue to sit and work for the parliamentary group in the state parliament, but under a different name instead of for the BSW in the future, that would be legally “completely sound,” said Singer. "We asked the state parliament directorate, that's completely okay. And that wouldn't actually be an unusual procedure." There have already been similar events in the Thuringian state parliament. “In this respect, there would basically be nothing wrong with such a procedure from a purely legal perspective.”
Due to the stalemate between the coalition and the opposition in Erfurt, the Brombeer government currently also needs the approval of the opposition Left Party for individual decisions. The Left Party's influence is likely to grow due to the stumbling of the coalition and the split of the BSW leadership. Thuringia's left-wing parliamentary group leader Christian Schaft called for new discussion formats. “As of today, in our view, the government coalition has collapsed,” he said.
Is stable governance possible like this?
There are several examples of how it can work: In Saxony, CDU Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer governs in a coalition that is ten votes short of a majority in the Saxon state parliament. The Left Party usually helps out there too.
In Thuringia, Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Left) steered the country through the corona pandemic for five years in his second term with a red-red-green minority government, among other things. At that time, red-red-green were four votes short. Votes from the CDU ensured the necessary majorities in parliament - and the CDU parliamentary group leader at the time was: Mario Voigt. But Ramelow's coalition also had to experience how it was outvoted by the opposition - with the help of the votes of the AfD, CDU and FDP.
