The AfD is apparently represented nationwide with hundreds of party members on the supervisory and administrative boards of savings banks and municipal companies. This emerges from research by the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”. A party spokesman confirmed this, according to the paper.
The editorial team spoke to numerous supervisory and administrative board members of housing construction companies, municipal utilities, energy suppliers, savings banks and federal authorities.
With the upcoming local and state elections this year, there are likely to be even more positions in the control committees for the AfD, as the party is predicted to make strong gains, writes “Zeit”. The parties sent their members to the control committees in accordance with the political proportionality in the parliaments.
“The threat to our democracy becomes frighteningly close” if access to security-relevant information coincides with right-wing extremism in the form of AfD members, says SPD member of the Bundestag Nina Scheer to “Zeit”. Scheer is a member of the Advisory Board of the Federal Network Agency, together with 15 other members of the Bundestag from all parliamentary groups, including two parliamentarians from the AfD. The committee will discuss, among other things, the critical infrastructure in the energy supply.
District Administrator Frank Steffen is chairman of the board of directors of Sparkasse Oder-Spree in Brandenburg, which includes two AfD delegates. He told the newspaper: “It concerns me that members of a party that is monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution sit on the board of directors.” They could submit applications that the committee would then have to deal with, and they also elected the board members.
Although supervisory or administrative boards have no direct influence on business, they do control management and budget management. In addition, the members find out about the company’s internal affairs there, they know early on about larger projects, investments and personnel and even about individual large financings from the credit institutions.
In view of the concerns, according to the report, discussions are underway about whether AfD members can be excluded from supervisory or advisory boards. Ulrich Stelkens, professor of administrative law at the University of Speyer, sees no scope for this. “As long as the party is not banned, it will be difficult to take certain measures against individual members and thereby exclude them from the committees,” he told “Zeit”. This would only be possible in the case of specific misconduct, for example if confidentiality obligations were violated.
