AfD member elected speaker of Saxony-Anhalt state parliament

Tobias Rausch, 35, was elected speaker of the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament on Tuesday, receiving 48 votes in favour and 29 against in a secret ballot of 82 members, with five abstentions. The AfD holds 39 seats and secured additional support from the five-member BSW party, allowing Rausch to obtain a majority despite opposition from the CDU, SPD, Greens and Left, which have pledged not to cooperate with the AfD.

The election makes Rausch the first member of the AfD – classified by Saxony-Anhalt’s domestic intelligence as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization – to hold the speaker’s position in any German state parliament. The session was accompanied by anti-AfD protests outside the parliament building.

"The BSW has made a conscious decision to elect, for the first time since 1945, a politician from a far-right party to the leadership of a German parliament," SPD general secretary Tim Klüssendorf said, demanding clarification from the CDU on its voting members.

"We will not allow ourselves to be intimidated, and we will not sit by when rights here or those of the people in this state are to be curtailed," Greens leader Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz added, describing the election as a crossing of a democratic “border.”

In a separate development, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul warned at the opening of the Berlin Climate and Security Conference that climate change can exacerbate poverty and hunger in fragile states, creating conditions conducive to extremism and migration. He argued that investment in renewable energy and climate protection also strengthens national security.