Banning Germany’s AfD party would be ‘wrong’, says former president of constitutional court
A former constitutional court president has warned against banning the Alternative for Germany, after protests calling for the poll-leading far-Right party to be outlawed.
AfD members attended a secret November meeting of far-Right groups, where extremists drew up plans for expelling millions of immigrants.
The echoes of Nazi ideology at a time when the AfD is leading the polls in all five East German states ahead of local and European elections in June shocked Germany.
Calls for party to be banned
Centre-Right and centre-Left politicians have called for the party, which is also polling higher nationally than any of the three coalition government parties, to be banned.
The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe decides on any ban but its former president Hans-Jürgen Papier warned the legal hurdle was too high for any attempt to be successful.
“That would only play into the hands of the AfD,” he told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.
Right-wing extremist
The AfD has been classified as Right-wing extremist in three East German states but for it to be banned it must be proved that it is plotting to overthrow democracy.
Applications for a ban can be submitted by the federal government, the parliament and the Bundesrat, which is the body representing the German states.
Mr Papier warned an application should only be made “if you have sufficient information to really substantiate all of the points mentioned and there is a high probability of success”.
‘Ban proposal is wrong’
“Based on my information, I currently believe that a ban proposal is wrong,” he added.
On Friday, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the Chancellery in Berlin in support of calls for a ban from members of Olaf Scholz’s ruling centre-Left SPD and the opposition CDU.
They brandished placards reading “democracy in danger” and “never again” after the expose into the secret Potsdam meeting by German investigative group Correctiv earlier this week.
“The fact we learn from our history is not just lip service,” the Chancellor had said after the revelations and the SPD is currently considering the ban.
The AfD said the meeting discussing “remigration” did not reflect its policy on immigration, which was set out in their manifesto.
‘Completely absurd’
“Calls for the AfD to be banned are completely absurd and expose the anti-democratic attitude of those making these demands,” Alice Weidel, co-leader of the party, told Politico earlier this week.
The constitutional court has only banned a party twice before. In 1952, the far-Right Socialist Reich Party was outlawed and in 1956 the Communist Party of Germany was forbidden.
In 2017, the court said the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party was not popular enough to endanger democracy and so should not be banned.
