2024-02-18 03:19:11
The calls for a ban on the AfD are becoming louder and louder. But politicians and lawyers are now expressing their concerns. What are they afraid of?
The fact that the AfD and its youth organization, the Junge Alternative (JA), attract attention with more radical slogans from year to year can be seen in reports, court decisions and minutes of plenary sessions. Nevertheless, a majority of constitutional lawyers and politicians have so far not believed in the desire for a ban on the party, which has often been expressed at demonstrations against right-wing extremism.
The legal policy spokesman for the Union faction, Günter Krings, even believes that a premature application to ban the AfD would give the party an advantage in the upcoming election campaigns in 2024. In fact, this could potentially make it even more attractive to protest voters.
“The findings of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution are crucial”
“We must fight the AfD, including its subdivisions, above all politically and examine every ban procedure very carefully to see whether it could do more good than harm to this party, at least in the short term,” the former Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior told the German Press Agency. According to experts, it would probably take several years for a decision to be made on such an application.
Since “ever-increasing radicalization” is apparently being observed in the AfD’s youth organization, Junge Alternative (JA), it would be justified to at least carefully examine a ban on this organization, says Krings. “The findings of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution are crucial and indispensable for a successful ban,” emphasized the lawyer and CDU politician. However, only the federal government, not the opposition, has this information obtained through intelligence services. It is therefore the Federal Government’s turn to make an assessment on the basis of which only it can then issue such a ban.
Defeat for young alternative in court
The Federal Constitutional Court decides whether a party is banned. The Bundestag can submit a corresponding application. The federal government and the Bundesrat also have this option. However, only the Federal Minister of the Interior can ban a supra-regional association. Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) banned the neo-Nazi group “Hammerskins Deutschland” last year.
Last week, the Cologne administrative court rejected an application for interim legal protection with which the AfD and the JA had tried to prevent the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution from observing the Junge Alternative as a confirmed extremist effort. The AfD youth organization has lodged a complaint against this. The reasons cited by the court include, among other things, connections to groups classified as anti-constitutional, such as the Identitarian Movement, and that the JA “represents a ethnic concept of ethnic origin.”
However, it is controversial among experts whether the JA should be viewed as an independent group or not. Finally, JA members have been drafted into parliament as AfD representatives or elected to the party’s federal executive board.
Green Party chairman doubts the independence of the JA
The chairman of the Greens in the Bundestag’s Interior Committee, Marcel Emmerich, is also skeptical. He says the AfD “pursues the goal of destroying our democratic constitutional state and social cohesion.” And that a defensive democracy must carefully examine all constitutional measures, which also includes a ban procedure. Emmerich tells dpa that it is clear to him that the AfD’s youth party represents “clearly anti-constitutional goals.” Nevertheless, he has concerns about a ban on the JA by the Federal Minister of the Interior. The Green MP says: “The fundamental question is whether the AfD youth organization is an independent organization or whether it should be viewed as part of the party.”
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At the end of January, the Federal Council launched a petition entitled “Check AfD ban!” received, which had been signed by around 800,000 people since mid-August. The same demand had been made in recent weeks at numerous rallies against right-wing extremism and for the protection of democracy. The protests were triggered by revelations by the media company “Correctiv” about a meeting of radical right-wingers in Potsdam in November, in which AfD politicians and individual members of the CDU and the very conservative Values Union also took part. Among them was a former employee of AfD chairwoman Alice Weidel.