According to figures from the NRW State Chancellery, which were reported by WDR, the black-green state government frequently fails to respond to parliamentary inquiries in a timely manner. Overall, during the current legislative period, the government managed to submit responses to less than one out of three inquiries within the required timeframe. As of May 8, 2026, only 2,680 of the 7,386 inquiries were received by the state parliament on time, representing a success rate of just 36.2%.
The state’s Interior Ministry offered several explanations for the delay, noting that “the type and scope of the questions are becoming increasingly complex and research-intensive”. The ministry stated that this increased workload requires hundreds of employees daily just to manage small-scale inquiries, which significantly ties up labor resources that could be used for other tasks. Furthermore, the Interior Ministry reported handling a disproportionately large number of inquiries compared to all other departments.
The government also cited a challenging volume of what it termed “series” inquiries-questions that are nearly identical, sometimes repeated 50 times with only a change to a location marker. For instance, by the end of April alone, five such series were submitted, amounting to 341 questions, many of which required the involvement of subordinate authorities or local municipalities to answer.
Opposition parties expressed strong dissatisfaction with the record. Marcel Hafke, the parliamentary agent for the FDP, asserted that the response deadline agreed upon between the state government and the parliament is not an informal suggestion, but a binding requirement. Ina Blumenthal of the SPD described the statistics as “no passing grade for the Prime Minister and his black-green government” warning that proper parliamentary function is dependent on the state government providing responses that are legal and timely.
Markus Wagner, an AfD deputy, was highly critical, labeling the lack of punctuality as “disrespectful to the parliament and ultimately to the citizens it represents”. The opposition emphasized that the ability to initiate small inquiries remains a fundamental and high parliamentary right for monitoring the government.
