Bundestag Ticker

Every session of the German Bundestag produces a stenographic protocol where Zwischenrufe (heckling) is transcribed verbatim. Bundestag Ticker parses these protocols, extracts every heckle, and prices the accumulated interruption in parliamentarian salary equivalents.

A civic side project with a real question underneath: how much of legislative time is heckling, and how much is that habit worth in euros?

The first run

Three sitting days, 4–6 March 2026. 1,050 disruptive heckles, 4,567 seconds of lost speaking time (≈76 minutes), €161,389.66 in collective cost – the salary equivalent of the 736 MdB (Members of the Bundestag) paid to sit through them.

AfD leads by a wide margin: 460 heckles, ~€76k in collective cost, nearly double the Grünen at 255 (~€41k). Top individual: Dr. Götz Frömming (AfD) with 61 heckles across three days, ~€9k.

How it's priced

MdB base rate: €10,083 monthly, annualized and divided by 700 h/year in the chamber (100 sitting days × 7 h) – €172.85/h, or €0.048/s.

Heckle duration is estimated at 2 words per second, with +2 s for substantive interjections (≥6 words) and +5 s if the speaker addresses the heckler by name. Pure applause and social shouts ("Sehr richtig!") don't count.

Individual cost = seconds × rate. Collective cost = individual × 736. Only heckles with named attribution are counted – anonymous shouts ("Zuruf von der AfD") are excluded, so the true totals are higher.