In April, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution upgraded the Young Alternative from a suspected case to a right-wing extremist effort. According to AfD information, the authority has now temporarily withdrawn this. The background is apparently an urgent application.
According to the AfD, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution will initially no longer treat and monitor its junior organization, the Junge Alternative (JA), as a secured right-wing extremist movement, but for the time being again as a suspected case. This was confirmed by co-party leader Tino Chrupalla of the dpa news agency.
The office has promised to temporarily suspend the classification and has also deleted all press releases about it, he said. “As a result, YES – as of today – is no longer a secure endeavor, is not treated as such and is not observed as such.” The background is therefore a corresponding urgent procedure that the AfD and JA had brought against the classification of the JA as a secured right-wing extremist movement at the Cologne Administrative Court in April.
Non-public procedure administrative court
A spokeswoman for the authority said when asked that the Federal Office would not comment publicly on the matter due to the ongoing proceedings and out of respect for the court.
The office had given a so-called standstill commitment in order to enable the court to properly examine the factual and legal situation in view of the urgency, said another spokesman for the administrative court on request. He could not provide any information on further details in the basically non-public procedure.
JA was upgraded in April
At the end of April, the domestic secret service announced that the JA would be classified and observed as a secured right-wing extremist effort in the future. The organization had previously been listed as a so-called suspected case. In addition, two other groups of the so-called New Right – the Institute for State Policy (IfS) and the association “One Percent” – were named.
“There is no longer any doubt that these three groups of people are pursuing anti-constitutional efforts,” said the President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang. In a statement from his agency, it said: “The JA propagates a folkish concept of society that is based on basic biological assumptions.”
AfD argues with “interference in the competition”
In the urgent application against this upgrade filed by the AfD and JA at the Cologne Administrative Court at the beginning of the week, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is accused, among other things, of “interfering with the democratic competition shortly before the upcoming state elections in Bavaria and Hesse”, at a time when the AfD was in a so-called survey high.
In the event of a suspicion, there are “sufficiently weighty factual indications” of anti-constitutional efforts. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution can then evaluate and store personal data and, under strict conditions, use intelligence resources, such as observing or recruiting informants.
In the case of a classification as a secured extremist effort, the proportionality of the use of intelligence resources is evaluated differently. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution then also reports in more detail on the findings available to it.