The democratic institutions in Thuringia, but possibly also in other parts of Germany, will soon face a severe stress test. If the AfD emerges stronger from elections, it could begin to block the processes or even restructure the political system in its favor. A group of experts around the Berlin lawyer and editor-in-chief of the Berlin-based lawyer have been dealing with this scenario for a good year now Constitution blogsMaximilian Steinbeis.
Now, for the first time, this group has made “recommendations for action” to politicians in order to strengthen the “resilience” of the rule of law in Thuringia and beyond. “From our point of view, only a prepared democracy is a truly defensive democracy,” write the experts in a paper that they presented to the Erfurt state parliament on Wednesday. Your seven recommendations at a glance.
So far, the Prime Minister has been able to terminate contracts completely independently
First warning: The State Constitutional Court is an open flank of democracy in Thuringia – it is an obvious target for authoritarian populists who could, for example, follow the example of the Polish PiS party or the Hungarian Fidesz party. This is currently the case: judges are elected with two-thirds of the votes in the state parliament. The AfD could therefore prevent future appointments with a “blocking minority”. The experts of the Constitution blogs Recommend: In order to ensure the court’s ability to function, the Constitutional Court in Weimar should, if necessary, propose its new members – and Parliament should also be allowed to elect them with a simple majority. Term limits should be enshrined in the constitution.
Second warning: The Thuringian Prime Minister can currently terminate contracts completely independently, for example the State Broadcasting Treaty. The authors warn that the consequence would be that employees of ARD, ZDF and MDR would have to be laid off. They recommend: Article 77 of the Thuringian Constitution should be changed in order to always involve the state parliament in such decisions.
Third warning: In the first session of the state parliament, a state parliament president must be elected; the strongest parliamentary group and, from the third ballot onwards, the oldest state parliament president have the right to propose. In Thuringia it could easily happen that the AfD settles this issue among themselves. In order to avoid this, the proposal is: The state parliament’s rules of procedure should be changed. “All political groups” should be allowed to propose candidates.
Fourth warning: The Thuringian State Center for Civic Education is currently not anchored in law anywhere, which is why a new state government could dissolve it “with the stroke of a pen,” as the authors write. Your recommendation: In order to prevent this, the institution should be protected by law – as a “partially legal institution under public law”.
The heads of the police and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution are dependent on the goodwill of the government
Fifth warning: According to current law, an “authoritarian-populist prime minister” would have the opportunity to immediately throw the heads of the police and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution out of office, because both are so-called political officials. This means that they are dependent on the goodwill of those in power. “These two offices should be removed from the category of political officials, as political neutrality is particularly important when exercising them,” it says.
Sixth warning: An AfD government could hold referendums in Thuringia that would give its legislative proposals greater legitimacy, “bypassing the democratic institutions,” as the authors write. They see a role model in Viktor Orbán’s “national consultations”, and they consider this to be such a great danger to democracy that they recommend that such referendums be expressly banned in the Thuringian constitution. “The direct democratic rights of citizens remain unaffected.”
Warning number seven: If the Thuringian Prime Minister continues to be elected in secret, then things could go like they did in February 2020, when the AfD tricked and demonstrated the democratic parties FDP and CDU. At that time, the AfD pretended that it wanted to elect its own candidate for the office of head of government in the third round of voting. But then she secretly voted for the FDP candidate, Thomas Kemmerich, and thus briefly made him prime minister. “In order to avoid such scenarios in the future and to increase the transparency of the election, the election should be open,” the paper says.
The state elections in Thuringia are scheduled to take place on September 1st. In the polls, the AfD, led by right-wing Björn Höcke, is currently at around 30 percent, well ahead of the CDU and even more so ahead of the Left Party of current Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow.