A Conservative Party member of the German Bundestag, Antje Tillmann, has deviated from her party’s stance on a contentious resolution regarding migration. According to official data from the German Bundestag, eight other members of the Union’s faction abstained from voting, while only Tillmann cast a dissenting vote.
Tillmann, a CDU politician from Erfurt, will not be re-running in the next election. In a recent op-ed for the Thüringische Landeszeitung, she expressed criticism of “blanket return demands.” Her argument was rooted in her personal experience as a guardian of a 25-year-old Syrian man, who arrived in Erfurt as a 15-year-old and is now undergoing an apprenticeship as an industrial mechanic.
In the Bundestag, a motion on the topic of migration was voted on on Wednesday, with a narrow majority in favor. In a roll-call vote, 348 members of the AfD and 187 members of the CDU/CSU parties voted in support of the motion, while 345 voted against and ten abstained. The FDP and AfD had previously announced that they would support the motion put forth by the CDU and CSU.
The exact voting behavior of each individual member of parliament was later published on the Bundestag’s website. According to the data, 187 members of the CDU/CSU, 80 members of the FDP and 75 members of the AfD voted in favor of the motion. Two FDP members abstained, eight CDU/CSU members did not vote and one AfD member also abstained.