Call to order

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In parliament, the call to order is a means of the session management to warn individual members.

The call to order is usually in the rules of procedure regulated and shall be sent to members by heckling, insults notice or other disorders. If necessary, the chairperson can also exclude the meeting . The call to order admonishes discipline, but is usually not directly linked to consequences. The chairman of the meeting may interrupt the speaker for the call to order.

Germany

Both the call to order (in Section 36 ) and the interjection call (in Section 119 ) are regulated in the rules of procedure of the German Bundestag . The same applies to state parliaments in Germany: In the rules of procedure there are legal provisions with the same or similar content - for example in the rules of procedure of the Thuringian state parliament on calls to order (in Section 37) and on interjection (in Section 109). Both the call to order and the interjection are recognized and codified components of the parliamentary present.

The complaint, however, is not regulated in the rules of procedure of the Bundestag and exists there only as a parliamentary custom.

The SPD member Herbert Wehner is the record holder for calls to order in the Bundestag.

Herbert Wehner (SPD) is the undisputed record holder on the "eternal best list" for calls to order . He received 57 and 58 warnings in the Bundestag. If one also counts his derailments as a communist member of parliament during his membership in the Saxon state parliament at the beginning of the 1930s, one comes to as many as 75 parliamentary administrative offenses. Karl Carstens (CDU) therefore angrily called Wehner the “biggest scoundrel in the whole Bundestag”, and the former CDU General Secretary Heiner Geißler even described him - rather appreciatively - as the “greatest parliamentary howitzer of all time”.

Behind Wehner are Heinz Renner (KPD) with 47 and Ottmar “Schreier” Schreiner (SPD) with 40 calls to order. According to Günter Pursch, Schreiner even made it his declared goal to outperform Wehner. In fourth place come Joschka Fischer (Greens) and Gerhard O. Pfeffermann (CDU), both of whom each received a dozen calls to order. 6th place is shared by Walter Fisch (KPD) and Gertrud Schilling (Greens), each with eleven parliamentary ruffians.

Franz Josef Strauss (CSU), also notorious as a political polter, limited his verbal attacks mainly to occasions outside of parliamentary sessions: he only received a call for order in the Bundestag.

While the number of calls to order in the German Bundestag was rather high up until the 1980s - for example, after the Greens first moved into the legislature from 1983 to 1987, 132 calls to order - it has decreased continuously since the 1990s; it was in 1990 up to 1994 and 1994/98 still with 35 or 32 regulatory calls per electoral term, from 1998 to 2017 only with a maximum of 10 regulatory calls per electoral term. It was not until 2017, after the AfD moved into the Bundestag for the first time, that the number of calls to order rose again. In the first half of the electoral period from the end of 2017 to the end of 2019 there were 19 calls to order, almost all of them either to AfD speakers or hecklers from other parties in response to AfD speeches.

Austria

In the Austrian National Council, calls to order are pronounced much more often than in the German Bundestag. Between 2008 and 2011, 108 calls to order were issued. A clear majority of these went to MPs from the opposition parties. 51 of these calls to order were made because of personal insults and denigrations of other MPs. The list was headed by Gerald Grosz (14 calls to order) and Peter Pilz (13).

The statements made by BZÖ mandates about the calls to order issued to them were noticeable; the following exchange between President Barbara Prammer and MP Peter Westenthaler is recorded:

Prammer: Mr. Westenthaler, I give you a call to order.
Westenthaler: Thank you! This is a medal!

Gerald Grosz also said that a call for order given to him would come "like a medal on the lapel".

Switzerland

In the Swiss National Council and Council of States , meeting participants can be called to order by the President if they are offensive, do not speak on the matter, violate other procedural rules or disrupt Council negotiations with their behavior. The council concerned decides on objections by the person concerned without discussion. If the call to order is disregarded, the president can withdraw the floor or exclude the council member for the remaining duration of a meeting.

literature

  • Günter Pursch : The parliamentary abuse book. Blooms of style and flashes of inspiration from our representatives in 60 years of the Bundestag . With a foreword by Gerda Hasselfeldt . Herbig, Munich 2009, 303 pages, ISBN 978-3-7766-2594-3
  • Holger Zürch : Foil stitch, boomerang, crook. Heckling in the Thuringian state parliament 1991 - 1993. Osnabrück 2001, ISBN 3-935316-26-7
  • Holger Zürch: “ Heckling is the icing on the cake in parliamentary soup” . Interview (pp. 179–182) in: Thuringia's founding years. Talks with Thuringian MPs about their time in the state parliament between 1990 and 1999. Erfurt 2004, ISBN 3-931426-85-8 (= Volume 20 of the Thuringia yesterday & today series , published by the Thuringia Regional Center for Civic Education )
  • Heinz Buri: Argument and Parliament. Attempt to develop a methodology for the analysis of dialogic sequences using the example of the "retrofitting debate". Munich 1992, ISBN 3-88073-459-3

Web links

  • Günter Pursch: Even members of parliament are only human ... Political debate culture in 50 years of the German Bundestag . In: Blickpunkt Bundestag No. 07/1999 ( online version )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rules of Procedure of the Thuringian Parliament (as pdf) in the version of July 19, 2012
  2. ↑ PDF on regulatory measures in the German Bundestag
  3. ↑ a b c d N.N .: With foil and mallet , in the text archive of the German Bundestag; accessed on January 9, 2010 ( Memento from January 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ A b c Günter Pursch: Even members of parliament are only human ... Political debate culture in 50 years of the German Bundestag . In: Blickpunkt Bundestag No. 07/1999 ( version in the web archive of the German Bundestag 2006 )
  5. ↑ Heiner Geißler: Laudation for Ottmar Schreiner on the occasion of the award of the Golden Duck 2003
  6. ↑ { Inquiry response to Parlament.gv.at
  7. ↑ Best Of "Ordnungsruf" Parliament in numbers
  8. ↑ Art. 39 Business Regulations of the National Council (SR 171.13)
  9. ↑ Art. 34 Business Regulations of the Council of States (SR 171.14)
  10. ↑ Art. 13 para. 1 Parliament Act (SR 171.10)
  11. ↑ DNB 961157941