In a stormy first session, the new AfD parliamentary group formed in the Bundestag. Even before the election of the new parliamentary group chairman, the parliamentary group discussed on Wednesday whether the MPs elected to the Bundestag for the first time Matthias Moosdorf from Saxony and Matthias Helferich from North Rhine-Westphalia should or should not belong to the parliamentary group.
When the debate got heated, the group’s staff were sent out. In the evening Helferich leaves the meeting. After a lengthy discussion, Helferich decided not to belong to the parliamentary group, says the outgoing parliamentary group leader Alexander Gauland. Members of the parliamentary group report Helper wanted to make an application for guest status in the parliamentary group on Thursday.
He was suspended from office during the election campaign. The background to the regulatory measure decided by the federal executive committee were statements in older chats. Helferich does not deny that he is in it as a “Friendly face of the NS” had designated. However, this term was merely a third-party attribution by left-wing bloggers whom he “satirized”, he explained.
The cellist Moosdorf is seen by some AfD MPs as a “troublemaker” – especially since he expressed harsh criticism of the outgoing parliamentary group leader Gauland. He had Gauland among other things “stubbornness” and held up too much understanding for radical failures by party friends. He did not know what he was currently being accused of, he said on request. The discussion about him was finally ended without a motion for non-admission to the group, it said from the meeting. Gauland said: “I can always live with harsh criticism.”