Irene Mihalic, the first parliamentary managing director of the Greens’ Bundestag faction, urged swift action to pass a Bundestag police law and amend the Member of Parliament Act to better protect against extremism and espionage. She told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland that the cases in which security badges had been denied or revoked solely for AfD staff illustrate the need to safeguard the Bundestag more effectively, remarking that these incidents are likely just “the tip of the iceberg”.
Mihalic cautioned that the Bundestag must not allow individuals with ties or loyalty to autocratic states such as Russia and China to gain access to the most sensitive information or negatively influence parliamentary processes. She called for a dedicated Bundestag police law that would enable parliamentary security to request investigations from the domestic intelligence service in appropriate cases and incorporate those findings into reliability checks.