Flood of parliamentary questions
Marc Henrichmann, a conservative lawmaker and the chairman of a special committee in Germany’s Bundestag that oversees the country’s intelligence services, said that while the government is not obliged to divulge classified or highly sensitive information in its answers to parliamentary questions, Russian intelligence services can still piece together valuable insights from the sheer volume and variety of AfD inquiries.
“Apart from insignificant inquiries and sensitive inquiries, there is also a huge gray area,” Henrichmann said. “And what I have regularly heard from various ministries is that individual inquiries are not really the problem. But when you look at these individual inquiries side by side, you get a picture, for example, of travel routes, aid supplies, and military goods to or in the direction of Ukraine.”
Henrichmann said AfD parliamentary questions in the Bundestag on subjects such as authorities’ knowledge of Russian sabotage and hybrid activities in the Baltic Sea region as well as of the poisoning of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had caught his attention and raised concerns.
AfD factions in German state parliaments have submitted more than 7,000 security-related inquiries since the beginning of 2020, according to a data analysis by Spiegel — more than any other party and about one-third of all security-related inquiries combined.
In Thuringia — where state intelligence authorities have labelled the AfD an extremist group — the party has submitted nearly 70 percent (1,206 out of 1,738) of all questions filed this legislative period. In the Bundestag, the parties parliamentary questions account for more than 60 percent of all inquiries (636 out of 1,052).
The AfD’s strategic use of parliamentary questions is nothing new, experts say. Since entering the Bundestag in 2017, the party has deployed them to flood ministries and to gather information on perceived political adversaries, experts say