BMW Pulls Car Offer on Day AfD Politician Becomes State Parliament President
BMW withdrew its leasing offer for the official car of Saxony-Anhalt’s new parliament president hours after Tobias Rausch of the AfD won the post on October 6. The company gave no explanation, while Rausch questioned whether his party membership decided the outcome.
On October 6, Tobias Rausch of the Alternative for Germany became the first member of his party to serve as president of a German state parliament.
Hours later, BMW withdrew a leasing offer for the official car that comes with the post.Rausch, 35, won the secret ballot in Magdeburg with 48 of 82 votes cast.
Twenty-nine deputies voted against him and five abstained. The AfD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance together hold 44 seats. The BSW had said it would back Rausch.
The remaining four votes came from other parties. The Christian Democrats had recommended that their members abstain.
Only five abstentions were recorded.The result followed the September 6 state election. The AfD took 43.8 percent of the vote and 39 of 83 seats.
The Christian Democrats fell to 17.2 percent and 15 seats. Turnout reached 77.8 percent, the highest in the state since reunification. The AfD finished short of an absolute majority.
The Landtag administration confirmed to Die Zeit that BMW’s headquarters cancelled the leasing offer on the same day as the vote.
A company spokesman said the BMW Group does not comment on customer relationships. No other major German manufacturer had submitted a bid for the contract. BMW currently supplies most of the vehicles used by the state parliament and government.
Rausch is using the BMW 7 Series assigned to his predecessor, Christian Democrat Gunnar Schellenberger. That lease ends in November.
The car has already covered more than 50,000 kilometres. If no replacement is arranged, the new president will have no dedicated official vehicle and driver.In an open letter to BMW, Rausch wrote that he noted the withdrawal “with great astonishment and personal disappointment.”
He called the timing especially striking, since the offer was pulled a few hours after his election. No public explanation has been given.
He said the sequence creates the impression that the decision is linked to his membership in the AfD, and he asked whether political affiliation should decide whether a German company maintains a business relationship with an elected officeholder.
He added that he now represents a democratically chosen constitutional body of the state.Days earlier, BMW chief executive Milan Nedeljković told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that right-wing populism and nationalism “are poison for an open business location that lives off world trade.” He said anyone advocating isolation does not act in the interest of Germany as a business location.
On Thursday evening, Beatrix von Storch, deputy leader of the AfD group in the Bundestag, posted on X and asked Elon Musk whether Tesla would supply a car for the Saxony-Anhalt parliament president. Musk had congratulated the AfD after its September election result.
He has not replied to the request.The state domestic intelligence service in Saxony-Anhalt classifies the AfD as a confirmed right-wing extremist organisation.
At federal level, court rulings have limited how the party may be labelled. Rausch has said he will carry out the office in a non-partisan manner. The presidency does not control the state government.
Coalition talks continue separately.