Status: 07/08/2021 1:33 p.m.
The Cologne administrative court will no longer decide on the dispute over the classification of the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case before the general election. This is also due to the “high complexity” of the process.
In the legal dispute between the AfD and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, there will no longer be a court judgment before the federal election. Both a positive and a negative decision for the AfD could otherwise influence the voting decision of the citizens in favor or to the detriment of the party, said the responsible administrative court in Cologne.
In addition, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution provided certain information late. Actually, the decisions in the urgent proceedings were planned for the beginning of July at a sufficient distance from the federal election, the court said. This planning by the competent chamber can no longer be maintained because of the “high complexity of the proceedings” and because of the late submission of documents.
The court has to decide on two urgent motions
The AfD had already turned to the court as a precaution in January to prevent a possible classification as a suspected case. For his part, the President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, informed the constitutional protection officers of the federal states in an internal video conference that the party had been upgraded to a suspected case. He did not announce anything publicly. When the information about the state authorities leaked to the public, the court forbade the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to publicly or not publicly disclose the classification, observation, treatment or examination of the party as a suspected case before the urgent proceedings were concluded.
As the court announced on Thursday, a second urgent motion, with which the party wants to prohibit the protection of the Constitution from specifying the number of supporters of the “wing” as around 7,000, will only be decided after the election. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been observing the informal association, which it believes is continuing, for several months no longer as a suspected case, but now as a “secured right-wing extremist endeavor”. In a judgment last year, the Berlin Brandenburg Higher Administrative Court saw no reason to object to this estimate of the personal potential of the “wing”.
The basis for the classification of the entire party as a suspected case sought by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is a comprehensive report on the AfD. Among other things, it deals with the question of how much influence the “wing”, classified as right-wing extremist tendencies by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has in the party. The Thuringian AfD state chairman Björn Höcke founded the network in summer 2015. Last spring, the merger was formally dissolved after pressure from the AfD’s federal board.
For the time being, no use of intelligence resources
Both the lawsuit and the party’s urgent motions are now expected to be decided in the first quarter of 2022. This means that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is not allowed to observe the entire party for the time being with intelligence means. This includes the use of so-called informers and other methods of secret information gathering. Before the end of the procedure, the authority is also not allowed to make any public assessments of the AfD. However, this does not apply to the “wing” and to several state associations of the party, which are already being monitored by the protection of the Constitution.
The AfD was pleased with the court’s new schedule. “The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution remains prohibited until 2022 from observing the AfD as a suspected case – we welcome that very much,” said party chairman Jörg Meuthen. “Because such an unjustified observation would foreseeably become public and cause massive damage to the AfD – especially during the election campaign.”
According to information from the dpa news agency, the court had already proposed to those involved in the proceedings in June that, in view of the size of the files and because of the upcoming election, decisions in the urgent procedure should be dispensed with and that an oral hearing should proceed directly with an oral hearing in the first quarter of 2022.