AfD politician becomes first party member to lead a German state parliament

Tobias Rausch, a politician from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, has been elected as the president of Saxony-Anhalt's state parliament. This makes him the first member of the party to lead a state parliament in Germany. Rausch, 35, won the vote with the support of 9 MPs from other parties, despite the AfD falling short of a majority in last month's election.

The election of Rausch as parliament speaker has been met with criticism and concern. Protesters outside the parliament building in Magdeburg held up banners saying "Never again is now". The regional Greens party leader, Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz, said that "a line has been crossed" with the election of a far-right speaker of parliament, and that it was a watershed moment.

Rausch rejected a post-war consensus in German politics not to work with the far right, saying that "the days of political firewalls should be a thing of the past". The AfD is considered pro-Russian and anti-immigrant, and has plans to segregate child refugees in schools, as well as being intolerant towards the LGBT community. According to BBC News, domestic intelligence classifies the AfD as "right-wing extremist" within Saxony-Anhalt.

Brief written by urgent.news from New Voice of Ukraine, BBC News — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.