Erfurt. There is talk of a spontaneous founding: two days after leaving the BSW in Thuringia, ex-members founded a new party called ThĂŒringen.Gerecht. The former BSW regional head, finance minister and deputy prime minister Katja Wolf was elected chairwoman, as founding members announced in Erfurt.
According to the company's own statements, the founding on Sunday came as a surprise even to members of the previous management team. The aim was to quickly create legal clarity, said one of the founders. âWe want to be on the safe side.â
The background is that the departed BSW members around Wolf want to continue to support the government of CDU Prime Minister Mario Voigt. Since the end of 2024, Thuringia has been governed by the only blackberry coalition made up of the CDU, BSW and SPD in Germany. With the collapse of the BSW, it is in crisis - also because the status of the previous BSW faction and thus one of the three coalition partners is considered legally uncertain. The reason: Only two of the twelve members of the group have been members of the BSW since Friday.
âWe donât want to jeopardize our ability to work,â said Infrastructure Minister Steffen SchĂŒtz to the German Press Agency. SchĂŒtz, who was temporarily BSW co-chairman in Thuringia, has now been elected Wolf's deputy in the new party. According to the statement, Wolf explained: "We promised to ensure stability and reliability in Thuringia. Now we invite everyone to put this promise into practice together with us." According to the State Chancellery, Prime Minister Mario Voigt said: âThe founding of Thuringia.Gerecht creates clarity and orderly conditions.â
Apparently, the founding of the party is intended to create the prerequisites for a new faction in which at least the ten ex-members of the BSW could change. Wolf indicated this: âA new party is needed for a new parliamentary group,â she told the dpa at the weekend, but left the founding date open and initially spoke of a deadline of October.
From circles within the new party it was said that new legal assessments had thrown the original schedule overboard and ensured that it was founded in a hurry on Sunday in Erfurt. According to a spokeswoman, the faction still operating as BSW will meet in the state parliament this Monday. There should then be an explanation of what the next steps are.
The opposition apparently also caused the time pressure. On Saturday, the AfD parliamentary group called for the faction status of the BSW to be revoked and for the group's funding to be stopped, with reference to the state constitution. In addition, a three-day state parliament meeting is planned in Thuringia from Wednesday this week, at which the question of the status of the BSW parliamentary group would also arise.
On Friday, nine other members of the state parliament who belong to the BSW parliamentary group turned their backs on the party. Another MP had already left the party a few days earlier but remained in the group. Three other MPs left both the BSW and the parliamentary group. Before the breakup, which was the result of a falling out with the federal executive board and party founder Sahra Wagenknecht, the BSW parliamentary group had 15 members.
According to the plans that have become known so far, there could be three splits from the previous BSW parliamentary group in the future: a parliamentary group possibly under the name of the newly founded party with ten members, three ex-BSW members as a parliamentary group and the remaining two BSW members as non-attached MPs.
