The old and new heads of government received one more vote than their coalition has mandates. The swearing-in of his cabinet was scheduled for later Thursday. The state parliament had already confirmed Astrid Wallmann (CDU) as state parliament president. Your deputies are Frank Lortz (CDU), Daniela Sommer (SPD), Angela Dorn (Greens) and René Rock (FDP).
The AfD failed again in the election and is not allowed to appoint a deputy to the state parliament president for the time being. Their candidate Anna Nguyen did not receive enough votes in three rounds of voting. The parliamentary group had not nominated a deputy in the last legislative period – all of the candidates it proposed failed in the election. AfD politician Bernd-Erich Vohl, who opened the constituent meeting, is the senior president.
There are five parliamentary groups represented in the new Hesse state parliament with a total of 133 members. The CDU has 52 seats, the SPD 23. The coalition has 75 of the 133 representatives and has a comfortable majority. The opposition leader is the AfD, which came second in the election and has 27 MPs. AfD MP Sascha Herr resigned from the party and parliamentary group before the constitutive meeting. He is now non-attached.
The Greens have 22 mandates. The smallest parliamentary group is the FDP with eight seats. The left, which failed to pass the five percent threshold in the election on October 8th and missed its return to the state parliament, is not represented.
For the first time, a black-red coalition will govern Hesse. After ten years of joint government work, the Greens were replaced as coalition partners by the SPD. Rhein took over the black-green coalition formed by his predecessor Volker Bouffier (CDU) after his age-related retirement from politics in 2022. In November he decided that he wanted to govern with the Social Democrats in the future.
