Hesse's Prime Minister Boris Rhein supports AfD candidates for Bundestag committee chairmanship

According to Hesse's Prime Minister Boris Rhein, AfD candidates should be supported in elections for the chairmanship of Bundestag committees. “The party is elected, and that’s how you should treat it,” Rhein told Stern in a previously published interview. As in the state parliament of Hesse, for example, the AfD should also be able to chair committees in the Bundestag. "We clearly differentiate ourselves from the AfD, but we do not exclude the party."

The AfD, like other parliamentary groups in the Bundestag, has the right to propose the chair of several specialist committees. In the last legislative period, however, their candidates missed the required majority in elections for the chairmanship of three Bundestag committees. The group therefore does not chair a committee. The AfD saw its rights violated and turned to the Constitutional Court with a constitutional complaint, but failed in Karlsruhe.

The chairmen of the Bundestag committees play a key role in everyday parliamentary life. They prepare, convene and chair committee meetings. Paragraph 58 of the parliamentary rules of procedure provides that the committees appoint their chairmen and their deputies. In recent decades, the parliamentary groups have traditionally agreed in the Council of Elders as to which faction should chair which committee.