Bundestag
Bundestag factions are concerned with the request to ban the AfD
Updated on October 8, 2024Reading time: 3 min.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case. Some are now considering whether the question of banning the party should be submitted to the Federal Constitutional Court.
The initiators of the motion for a possible AfD ban are putting their proposal up for discussion in the parliamentary group meetings this week and next. Seven MPs from the Union parliamentary group support the motion, but there is “maximum reluctance” in the group as a whole on this issue, said the Parliamentary Managing Director, Thorsten Frei (CDU).
He himself has legal and political concerns about such a ban, also because it would enable the AfD to portray itself as a “martyr.”
The leadership of the Green Party sees things differently. “The AfD is a party that, wherever it can gain influence, uses this influence to question democracy, to disrupt and destroy parliamentarism and to endanger a free life in this country,” said the AfD Co-chair, Katharina Dröge. This recently became clear in the Thuringian state parliament.
Dröge added: “That’s why what we are discussing with the AfD ban procedure is not a question of if for us, but a question of how.” It is the task of the conference of federal and state interior ministers “to begin collecting evidence now so that we can then make a well-founded decision.”
SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich expressed skepticism about a ban procedure at this time. Before a meeting of the SPD parliamentary group in Berlin, he called the MPs’ request the “wrong path”. He still sees “a few legal and substantive problems” and would like the constitutional protection authorities to first collect further evidence against the AfD, said Mützenich.
However, he admitted that the SPD was divided on the issue. “There are currently different assessments within our group.”
As far as he knows, no member of the CSU was among the initiators of the ban proposal, said CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt in Berlin. He has no doubts that there are radical and extremist forces in the AfD. Nevertheless, it is true that the party can only be fought politically, “you have to rule away the AfD”.
A total of 37 members of the Bundestag from the SPD, the CDU/CSU, the Greens and the Left are behind the proposal. Their common goal is to apply to the Federal Constitutional Court for proceedings to ban the AfD. The Bundestag, Bundesrat or Federal Government can request a party ban from the Federal Constitutional Court. The AfD would have to be proven in the process that it is taking aggressive, combative action against the constitution.
The AfD is calm about the initiative. The proposal is doomed to failure and will not even pass the Bundestag, said party leader Alice Weidel. “You cannot exclude 20 percent of citizens in the Federal Republic of Germany from democratic participation.” “This ban proposal reflects the undemocratic spirit of the competing parties,” she told journalists in Berlin. It also reflects how divided the parties are, and not just on this issue.
The parliamentary director of the AfD in the Bundestag, Bernd Baumann, said that they trust in democracy and added: “I’m not afraid of anything.” In principle, Baumann did not oppose party bans. For example, the German Communist Party (KPD) was rightly banned. Such bans could be sought for left-wing and right-wing extremists, but the AfD is miles away from that, he said.
In 2017, the Second Senate in Karlsruhe rejected a ban on the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) because there was no evidence of this party successfully implementing its anti-constitutional goals.