7 AfD employees denied access to German parliament

Seven employees of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have been denied access to the lower house of parliament, or Bundestag, in Berlin for security reasons, reported dpa.

An AfD spokesman confirmed on Sunday that five of them worked for individual lawmakers, and two were employed by the party's parliamentary group.

He added that one of the two affected parliamentary group employees no longer works for the parliamentary group.

The story was first reported by the news magazine Der Spiegel in December.

No decision has yet been made on the proposal by Bundestag President Julia Klöckner to cancel the salaries of employees who do not receive a house ID card and do not have access to parliamentary IT systems.

In December, she said that people who had not been authorized to access the Bundestag following a security check should generally be barred from working for members of parliament and should not be paid from public funds.

She has asked the parliamentary groups to amend the Members of Parliament Act accordingly.

Bernd Baumann, parliamentary secretary of the AfD parliamentary group, criticized the proposal.

"If employees of members of the Bundestag are denied a house pass and therefore no salary is to be paid in future on the grounds that they are not reliable, the question arises as to what criteria are used to assess this reliability," he said.

The police are tasked with carrying out security checks on employees of members of parliament and parliamentary groups.

Currently, only employees who have access to particularly sensitive classified information are checked to see whether Germany's domestic intelligence agency has any sensitive information about them.