The way the Defence Committee works

The meetings of the Defence Committee take place regularly on Wednesdays in the weeks which the Bundestag has designated as weeks of sittings. Since, like the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Committee on Internal Affairs and the Budget Committee, the Defence Committee is a so-called "closed committee", access to its meetings is restricted to the titular committee members, their substitutes, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces, the chairpersons of the parliamentary groups and the President of the German Bundestag. Representatives of the ministries and the Land governments expressly authorized and subjected to security checks in advance and specific members of staff from the parliamentary groups and the administration are also permitted to attend. The distribution of documents concerning meetings, including the minutes, is also restricted to a group of persons decided by the Committee itself.

 

At administrative level, the Defence Committee has a secretariat with a staff of 8 to support it in its work. The secretariat's main task is to prepare, run and follow up committee meetings. This involves, inter alia, compiling documents for the Committee's deliberations, distributing the agenda, drafting recommendations for resolutions and reports to be submitted to the plenary, and drawing up the minutes of meetings. In addition, the secretariat is responsible for processing submissions to the Committee, for preparing and organising trips by delegations and meetings which take place outside the Bundestag, as well as dealing with visitors from Germany and from abroad.