The FDP politician Marcus Faber (40) will be the new chairman of the Defense Committee and thus the successor to the controversial Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann. The Bundestag member prevailed against Alexander Müller in a vote in his parliamentary group in the second round on Tuesday, as the German Press Agency learned from the meeting.
The members of the Defense Committee are responsible for parliamentary control of the Defense Ministry and the Bundeswehr. They are also involved in the adoption of the defense budget and the procurement of equipment and materials. The FDP parliamentary group has the right to propose the chair, which is followed by a formal election by the committee members.
Faber, who is from Stendal in Saxony-Anhalt, was already his parliamentary group’s defense policy spokesman, but resigned from this position in 2022 after controversial comments about an appearance by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in the Defense Committee. Müller (Hesse regional association) was expected to remain defense policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group and chairman of his party in the committee.
Strack-Zimmermann is stepping down as chair of the committee because she is moving into European politics. She is the top candidate of the FDP and the liberal party family Alde for the European elections. In the Bundestag, she has vehemently advocated for more extensive arms deliveries to Ukraine and has not shied away from any controversy in doing so.
“I think people either appreciate me or find me really creepy. I take that with respect. It’s okay. I didn’t go into politics to avoid being noticed. So you work and of course you want to be noticed,” she told the German Press Agency in Berlin on Tuesday. “If you look at the gallery of ancestors, I am certainly the loudest of all those who have been allowed to carry out this task, apart from Franz Josef Strauss.” But the overall picture also includes the fact that 70 days after her election to office, Vladimir Putin had Ukraine attacked. This “turned the spotlight a little brighter” on the Defense Committee.