Until now, there were no rules for MPs about bringing guns or other weapons into the German parliament — but that's about to change. According to a report, a far-right AfD staff member was recently caught with a knife.
Image: picture-alliance/R. Goldmann
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Germany's parliament is planning to ban weapons from all of its buildings following a series of recent security scares, according to a report published on Friday.
The Bundestag, Germany's low house of parliament, does not currently bar weapons or outline security measures in its house rules.
The parliament's security officers are tabling a draft to change the rules on April 10, according to the newspapers of the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND).
The amendment to the house rules states: "it is not permitted to bring weapons, ammunition, explosives, explosive substances, dangerous instruments."
The new rules will specifically forbid firearms, bows, crossbows, arrows, slingshots, catapults, toy guns, tasers, gasses and pepper sprays, as well as knives, news agency DPA reported.
Currently, tourist groups and journalists are thoroughly screened at the entrances of the Bundestag — but some concerning cases have slipped through the cracks in recent months.
In March, an unknown individual managed to enter the Bundestag after being dropped off by a taxi in-between the main plenary building and another which houses MPs' offices. The person managed to walk into the Bundestag with a group of lawmakers before they were stopped and questioned.
One of the most eyebrow-raising cases involves the staff member of a far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) lawmaker who was caught with a knife in early February.
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The blade was uncovered on the AfD staff member while he was taking part in an official German parliament visit to European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans in Brussels.
Security officials there confiscated the blade due to its size, but the staff member claimed he always handed over the knife at the Bundestag gates, RND reported.
In March, news magazine Der Spiegel reported that lawmakers and their staff are allowed to bring knives with up to a 12 centimeter (4.7 inch)-long blade with them.
German media have also reported that the staff member of other parties have experienced threatening gestures and verbal abuse from AfD staff since the far-right party's arrival in parliament following the 2017 general election.
Leading members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have often made provocative, if not outright offensive, remarks — targeting refugees or evoking Nazi terminology.
Image: Britta Pedersen/dpa/picture alliance
Björn Höcke
The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia first made headlines in 2017 for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. In July 2023, he echoed Nazi rhetoric by declaring that "This EU must die so that the true Europe may live." In 2019, a court ruled that it was not slanderous to describe Höcke as a fascist.
Image: picture-alliance/Arifoto Ug/Candy Welz
Alice Weidel
One of the best-known public faces of the AfD, party co-chair Alice Weidel rarely shies away from causing a row. Her belligerent rhetoric caused particular controversy in a Bundestag speech in 2018, when she declared, "burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state."
Image: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa/picture-alliance
Maximilian Krah
Maximilian Krah, the AfD's top candidate in the 2024 European Parliament election, has called the EU a "vassal" of the US and wants to replace it with a "confederacy of fatherlands." He also wants to end support for Ukraine, and has warned on Twitter that immigration will lead to an "Umvolkung" of the German people — a Nazi-era term similar to the far-right's "great replacement" conspiracy theory.
Image: Ronny Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images
Alexander Gauland
Former parliamentary party leader Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. He said Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."
Christian Lüth
Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."
Image: Soeren Stache/dpa/picture-alliance
Beatrix von Storch
Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Murat
Harald Weyel
Not all of the AfD's scandals are about racism: Sometimes they are just revealing. Bundestag member Harald Weyel was caught in a scandal in September 2022 when a microphone he clearly didn't know was on caught him expressing his hope that Germany would suffer a "dramatic winter" of high energy prices or else "things will just go on as ever."
Image: Christoph Hardt /Future Image/imago images
Andre Poggenburg
Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.
