German lawmakers have called for increased security measures at the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, following nationwide raids on members of a far-right group suspected of plotting a coup.
The vice president of the Bundestag, Katrin Goring Eckard, has indicated that the authorities are examining “carefully what security measures” must be “adapted” for the Bundestag. “We will address the issue in all the decisive bodies”, she has indicated in statements collected by dpa.
Social Democrat MP Sebastian Hartmann has also called for a reassessment of Parliament’s security. “After the arrest of a former AfD deputy who wanted to storm the Bundestag, it is necessary to urgently check her existing contacts (at the headquarters),” he explained.
The president of the parliamentary body for the control of the secret services, the deputy of the Greens Konstantin von Notz, has declared that the Bundestag’s security concept is not designed so that “constitutional enemies with privileges of access” to the Chamber are elected.
“We must increase the concept of protection of the Budestag without sabotaging the daily life of the Democratic deputies,” he said in statements to the RND news portal.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday described the alleged involvement of a former legislator as “very bad”, but stressed that the consequences depended on “autonomous decisions by the authorities” in the country, “each of which weighs the matter on a legal basis”.
The macro police operation arrested 25 individuals — including a former AfD party deputy for alleged involvement — who intended to “use military means” against state representatives and subsequently form their own government.
The Prosecutor’s Office explained that there are operations underway to arrest a total of 52 people. This small group sought to form a “transitional military government” that would “negotiate the new order in Germany with the allied powers victorious in World War II, in line with the classic Reich narrative.”
