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Berlin – With the votes of the Union, SPD, Greens and FDP, the Bundestag has deleted the coming week of meetings from the meeting calendar. The week of November 25th to 29th was originally reserved for budget discussions. After the break of the traffic light coalition, there are no longer any majorities for budget planning. The move was sharply criticized in a debate in parliament by the AfD, BSW and the Left.

The parliamentary managing director of the AfD parliamentary group, Bernd Baumann, spoke of a “kind of faction cartel”. The fact that there is no discussion about the budget in no way justifies the cancellation of the session week. “In this way you are reducing and neutering parliamentary work and the freedom of the mandate,” he accused the Union, SPD, Greens and FDP.

The Left MP Christian Görke said that if there is no budget, the budget week is a normal meeting week with government surveys and question time to control the government and with the opportunity for the opposition to introduce draft laws to form opinions.

“Not only are you refusing to do your job, you are not letting us do our job!” The Bundestag should not stop its work “just because an already incompetent federal government is falling apart,” said BSW MP Jessica Tatti.

Speakers from the Union, SPD, Greens and FDP defended the move. There are two full weeks of meetings in December to decide on time-critical projects, said the parliamentary managing director of the SPD parliamentary group, Katja Mast.

She mentioned the increase in child benefit, the extension of the Germany Ticket and tax relief (cold progression). This will be worked on in meeting weeks and in non-meeting weeks. The budget week is dispensable because there is clearly no majority for it, “but that does not mean a shutdown,” said the parliamentary director of the Greens, Irene Mihalic.

Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD) called the next plenary session for December 4th today and said to the MPs: “Enjoy the weekend, calm down a bit, take it easy – and then we can move on.”

The budget week is unlikely to be the only one that will be canceled until the planned new election in February. The head of the CSU MPs, Alexander Dobrindt, said after a meeting of the Union parliamentary group that so far four weeks of meetings had been planned in January and February. These could not be maintained.

It is assumed that they will be reduced to one meeting week and two meeting days. This is the procedure that is normally used in election years in September. © dpa/aerzteblatt.de