Ten BSW members in Thuringia have announced they are leaving the party

Ten of a total of twelve remaining members of the BSW parliamentary group in Thuringia have announced that they are leaving the party, including Finance Minister Katja Wolf, Environment Minister Tilo Kummer and Digital Minister Steffen Schütz. BSW parliamentary group leader Sigrid Hupach said at a press conference that they still wanted to maintain the government coalition with the CDU and SPD. They want to initially remain in the group and discuss further steps in the coming week. "We will no longer remain in internal party debates."

A dispute over the direction of the BSW has been raging for a long time between the federal leadership around founder Sahra Wagenknecht and the Thuringian party. The federal leadership had repeatedly called on the regional association to withdraw support from Prime Minister Mario Voigt (CDU) and to resign from the government. The majority of Thuringian MPs reject this.

The special party conference on the future of the coalition planned for Sunday has been canceled, said Wolf. »The special party conference had a task that it no longer has. He should give the group a task in dealing with Mario Voigt," said Wolf.

Already three exits on Wednesday

It was only on Wednesday that BSW MPs Stefan Wogawa, Dirk Hoffmeister and Roberto Kobelt left the parliamentary group and also the party. The group had shrunk from 15 to 12 members. The three ex-BSW politicians want to form a parliamentary group with a specially founded party “Your vote counts”.

The only two Thuringian BSW MPs who have not announced their departure from the party are Anke Wirsing and Sven Küntzel. They are considered supporters of the federal party's course.

Even before the withdrawals, the coalition did not have its own majority in the state parliament - there was a stalemate of 44 of 88 seats with the opposition from the AfD and the Left. The majority of the coalition was usually organized through compromises with the Left faction.

Transparency note: An earlier version of this text stated that the MPs would be leaving the BSW parliamentary group. They have now announced that they want to leave the party and discuss the future of the group.