International Parliamentary Groups (PG) in the German Bundestag

The executive committees of the International Parliamentary Groups (PG) in the German Bundestag in this 21st legislative period can now be found online here, but not the respective members – and in popular groups, there can be several dozen of them. Otherwise, the Bundestag administration under Julia Klöckner shines with little transparency when it comes to the work of the PGs and their trips abroad, their financing and their organisation. It seems as if the reporting requirements for every state-funded “Demokratie leben” (Living Democracy) project are more extensive than those for those who are supposed to represent German parliamentarianism abroad.

In our newsletter, we have repeatedly pointed out how natural it is for members of the AfD to act as parliamentary representatives abroad. Neither the Bundestag administration nor their fellow travellers seem to be bothered by the AfD MPs' questionable understanding of democracy as soon as they leave Germany (see here for a summary of the first half of 2025 in Newsletter #8).

Most recently, Malte Kaufmann and Stefan Keuter from the AfD took part in a delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) assembly in Geneva (Switzerland) in October (see Bundestag press release), and Sascha Lensing (AfD) took part in a delegation of the Interior Committee to Brussels at the end of September. Topics: migration, asylum and internal security (see Bundestag press release).

Redacción: Ulli Jentsch