Die Linke faction Fraktion Die Linke im Bundestag | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Registered | 23 September 2005 |
| Dissolved | 6 December 2023 |
| Succeeded by | The Left group BSW group |
| Website | |
| https://www.linksfraktion.de/start/ | |
The Left Party parliamentary group in the Bundestag (short Linksfraktion, own spelling Fraktion DIE LINKE. im Bundestag) was the parliamentary group of the party Die Linke in the Bundestag from 2005 to 2023. It dissolved in 2023 following the Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht split. [1]
The Left parliamentary group was constituted on 23 September 2005. Before the merger of Labour and Social Justice (WASG) and the Party of Democratic Socialism(PDS) to form Die Linke on 16 June 2007, the Left parliamentary group was the joint parliamentary group of independent members of the German Bundestag and members of the two source parties in the German Bundestag. The parliamentary group chairmanship was initially shared by Gregor Gysi and Oskar Lafontaine. After the 2009 German federal election, Gysi was elected the sole chairman due to Lafontaine's withdrawal due to illness. After Gysi decided not to run for parliamentary group chairmanship again, Sahra Wagenknecht and Dietmar Bartsch were elected parliamentary group chairmen in October 2015. In November 2019, Amira Mohamed Ali was elected to succeed Sahra Wagenknecht. From October 2023, Bartsch was the sole parliamentary group chairman.
On 26 February 2010, 50 members of the Left Party were excluded from the Bundestag debate on the extension of the occupation of Afghanistan by the President of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, after they had violated the German Bundestag's rules of procedure by holding up posters with the names and ages of victims of the deadly air strikes in Kunduz in early September 2009 from their seats. [2] The parliamentary group then left the plenary session en masse. [3] However, contrary to the Bundestag's rules of procedure, the parliamentary group was allowed to vote again at Lammert's suggestion, where it voted unanimously against the mission. [4] In October 2013, the daily newspaper Die Welt alleged that the parliamentary group's manager, Ruth Kampa, had worked for the Ministry for State Security for over 20 years as an unofficial employee. Kampa was then hired as a legal advisor instead.
Although Die Linke failed to clear the five percent hurdle in the 2021 German federal election and only entered the Bundestag with 39 MPs thanks to the basic mandate clause , it formed its own fraktion and not a gruppe. [5] The prerequisite for this was not the second vote share, but that a party achieved more than 5% of the seats in parliament therefore the five percent hurdle did not prevent them from winning seats. Die Linke accounted for 5.3% of the mandates, and most recently the parliamentary group had 5.2% of the MPs. [6]
On 14 November 2023, the parliamentary group decided to dissolve itself on 6 December 2023. The reason was the resignation of ten parliamentary group members around Sahra Wagenknech t as part of the founding of the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance. With its remaining 28 MPs, Die Linke could no longer form a parliamentary group in the Bundestag, as this would have required at least 37 MPs (5% of parliamentarians). [7] The Left group was then formed.
The parliamentary group executive committee consisted of the following people until 2023: [8]
| Name | Position | Area of responsibility |
|---|---|---|
| Dietmar Bartsch | Parliamentary group leader | |
| Jan Korte | Chief Whip | |
| Susanne Ferschl | Deputy Group Leader | Chair of Working Group I: Work and Social Affairs |
| Gesine Lötzsch | Chair of Working Group II: Budget, Finance, Economy, Infrastructure, Environment | |
| Nicole Gohlke | Chair of Working Group III: Education, Digitalization, Democracy, Interior | |
| Heidi Reichinnek | Women's policy spokeswoman | |
| Advisory voices on the board | ||
| Petra Pau | Vice-President of the Bundestag | |
| Martin Schirdewan | Party leader | |
| Janine Wissler | ||
The female MPs formed the women's plenum. It elected the spokesperson for women's policy, who was a member of the parliamentary group executive and had a right of veto on parliamentary group decisions.
The Left Party faction was recently composed of 38 members in the 20th Bundestag, making it the smallest of the six factions in the Bundestag.
The following members were directly elected :
The parliamentary group appointed "spokespersons" who communicate the parliamentary group's opinion to the outside world on certain topics and who were available to address specific topics. The party provides the chairman of the Committee on Climate Protection and Energy . Former party chairman and trade union official Klaus Ernst was elected chairman on December 15, 2021. [9] Before the election, the nomination under the slogan "Not your seriousness" had been criticized by climate activists and several Left Party politicians. [10] [11] Since the Alternative for Germany (AfD) candidate did not receive enough votes in the Committee on Internal Affairs and Homeland in the election of the chairman and the election of a deputy chair was subsequently dispensed with, the committee was temporarily chaired by Petra Pau, the longest-serving member of the committee. [12]
On 10 October 2023, MP Thomas Lutze switched from the Left Party to the SPD.
On 23 October 2023, with the foundation of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, ten of the 38 Left Party members of the Bundestag left the Left Party. However, they remained with the parliamentary group as independents until its dissolution. [13]
From 2002 onwards, the majority of the parliamentary group's members donated 200 EUR per month to the association of the Bundestag parliamentary group Die Linke e. V. to support political and cultural projects. The association not only supports international projects from medica mondiale (Right Livelihood Award 2008) to the solar energy project in Cuba, but also, for example, the Staßfurter Tafel or a project for people with disabilities in Kyffhäuserkreis. [14]
At the beginning of 2012, a report by the news magazine Der Spiegel revealed that 27 members of the Bundestag from the Left Party, and thus more than a third of the members of the Left Party, were being monitored separately by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Among those being monitored were almost the entire leadership of the Bundestag faction. [15] The extent of the monitoring was controversial and was criticized by politicians from the FDP, SPD, Greens and CDU. [16] In 2013, according to Der Spiegel, 25 of the 57 members of the Bundestag from the Left Party were under surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. [17]
In March 2014, the Federal Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maizière, informed the parliamentary group leader Gregor Gysi that Left Party MPs would no longer be monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and that members of the Bundestag would "in future generally be exempt from surveillance by the domestic secret service". [18]
Oskar Lafontaine is a German politician. He served as Minister-President of the state of Saarland from 1985 to 1998 and was federal leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 1995 to 1999. He was the lead candidate for the SPD in the 1990 German federal election, but lost by a wide margin. He served as Minister of Finance under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder after the SPD's victory in the 1998 federal election, but resigned from both the ministry and Bundestag less than six months later, positioning himself as a popular opponent of Schröder's policies in the tabloid press.
Sahra Wagenknecht is a German politician, economist, author, and publicist. Since 2009 she has been a member of the Bundestag, where until 2023 she represented The Left. From 2015 to 2019, she served as that party's parliamentary co-chair. With a small team of allies, she left the party on 23 October 2023 to found her own party in 2024, Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, to contest elections onwards.
Klaus Ernst is a German politician and was a leading member of the Labour and Social Justice Party, later The Left and switched to BSW in October 2023.
Dietmar Gerhard Bartsch is a German politician who has served as co-chair of The Left parliamentary group in the Bundestag since 2015. Prior, he served as federal treasurer of The Left from 2006 to 2009 and federal managing officer from 2005 to 2010. He was a prominent member of The Left's predecessor party, the PDS, of which he served as treasurer from 1991 to 1997 and federal managing officer from 1997 to 2002.
Sevim Dağdelen is a German politician and a member of the Bundestag. She was elected for Left Party and switched in October 2023 to Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht.
The Left, commonly referred to as the Left Party, is a democratic socialist political party in Germany. The party was founded in 2007 as the result of the merger of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative. Through the PDS, the party is the direct descendant of the Marxist–Leninist ruling party of former East Germany, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). Since October 2024, The Left's co-chairpersons have been Ines Schwerdtner and Jan van Aken. The party holds 28 seats out of 736 in the Bundestag, the federal legislature of Germany, having won 4.9% of votes cast in the 2021 German federal election. Its parliamentary group is the second-smallest of seven in the Bundestag, and is headed by parliamentary co-leaders Heidi Reichinnek and Sören Pellmann.
The Communist Platform is an association within the German Left Party. Among the main goals of the KPF are the preservation and advancement of Marxist thought, improving the situation of the poor, and fighting racism and anticommunism. They believe that change in society should be aimed at building a socialist society. Its most prominent member was Sahra Wagenknecht, who was a member of the European Parliament and is now a member of the Bundestag. As of May 2008 the Platform had around 961 members.
Fabio Valeriano Lanfranco De Masi is a German-Italian politician. He was a member of the German Bundestag from 2017 to 2021 and was a member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Germany from 1 July 2014 to 23 October 2017. Until September 2022 he was a member of The Left Party, part of the European United Left–Nordic Green Left.
Dagmar Enkelmann is a German politician of Die Linke party.
Gökay Akbulut is a Turkish-German politician and social scientist. She is currently serving in the Bundestag as a member of The Left Party from the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg.
Amira Mohamed Ali is a German politician and member of the Bundestag since 2017. From 12 November 2019 till October 2023, she was the parliamentary co-chairperson of The Left alongside Dietmar Bartsch. In October 2023, she left The Left alongside others like Sahra Wagenknecht to found a new party. Mohamed Ali is the chairwoman of the board of the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht-Association which was founded to prepare a new party in January 2024.
Caren Nicole Lay is a German politician. She has been a member of the Bundestag since 2009 and has been deputy chairperson of the Die Linke parliamentary group in the Bundestag since 2017. From 2012 to 2018, she was one of the deputy chairpersons of her party. In November 2019, Lay unsuccessfully applied to succeed Sahra Wagenknecht as co-chairperson of the Die Linke parliamentary group in the Bundestag. She was defeated by Amira Mohamed Ali in a competitive vote.
Thomas Lutze is a German politician who represents the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Previously, he was a member of the Left Party. Thomas Lutze has served as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Saarland from 2009 to 2023, and has represented Berlin since October 2023.
Żaklin Nastić is a German politician who was elected for The Left. In October 2023 she switched to BSW. She has served as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Hamburg since 2017.
Sören Pellmann is a German politician who represents The Left. Pellmann has served as a member of the Bundestag from Leipzig II in the state of Saxony since 2017. Since 2024, he has been serving as the Leader of The Left Group in the Bundestag, alongside Heidi Reichinnek.
Jessica Tatti is a German politician. Born in Marbach am Neckar, Baden-Württemberg, she represents Wagenknecht-party and serves as its Group Chief Whip in the German Bundestag. She switched party from The Left in October 2023 to "Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht".
Sabine Zimmermann is a German politician. Born in Pasewalk, Bezirk Neubrandenburg, she is a member of Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht. She served as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Saxony between 2005 and 2021, for The Left.
Federal elections in Germany will be held to elect the members of the 21st Bundestag. They are currently scheduled to be held on 28 September 2025. However, the elections are expected to be brought forward to 23 February due to the collapse of the governing traffic light coalition during the 2024 German government crisis. If held early, the 2025 election would be the fourth snap election in the history of post-war Germany after those in 1972, 1983 and 2005.
The BSW group is a group in the 20th German Bundestag whose members belong to the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht party. All ten members of the group were previously in the Die Linke fraktion, which was dissolved in December 2023. The BSW group was recognized as a group on 2 February 2024.
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