Start of negotiations
AfD against the Office for the Protection of the Constitution: Cookies in the courtroom
Because of the large number of people involved in the process and around 100 registered journalists, the OVG moved to the entrance hall of the court. The court itself keeps all 15,000-page files digitally. photo
© Guido Kirchner/dpa
The AfD representatives had drinks and cookies put on the table in court – at their own expense. You’re probably not in a hurry. There is a lot at stake for Weidel and Chrupalla’s party.
The party of Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla wants to ensure that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution withdraws its classification of the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case.
The lawyer for the opposing side explained that the classification by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution should not only take criminally relevant statements into account. Rather, the benchmark is whether these are directed against the free, democratic basic order.
Even before the OVG entered into the substantive dispute, the AfD’s lawyer called for an adjournment. It was not possible to respond to the approximately 4,200 pages of documents and 116 hours of video material submitted in January in such a short time, he said. Among other things, he demanded access to a new report from the Federal Office on the AfD. A representative of the Federal Office emphasized in court that the authority’s new assessment of the AfD was not yet final – “there is no finished report.”
Presiding judge accuses AfD of abuse of law
The AfD filled several hours at the beginning of the hearing with reservations about the Senate and the naming of numerous witnesses from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The presiding judge Gerald Buck accused the AfD of abusing the law. The party had not presented any new arguments for its reservations about the Senate, he said. Your request against the entire Senate was made across the board and obviously without any basis. In the morning, observers had to leave the courtroom because the AfD wanted to exclude media representatives and spectators for a certain point that concerned content that was not intended for the public. The Senate did not follow this.
The OVG is intended to clarify whether a judgment from the lower instance at the Cologne Administrative Court is valid. The BfV, based in Cologne, had classified the party and the youth organization Junge Alternative (JA) as suspected right-wing extremist cases. The judges in Cologne confirmed this view in 2022. Since then, the party and the JA have been allowed to be monitored using intelligence means.
Ethnic folk term
At that time, the Cologne court referred to reports and material collections from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Activities of the youth organization were also included in the evaluation. Both in the now formally dissolved wing, which was once brought into being by the Thuringian AfD state leader Björn Höcke, and in the JA, an ethnically understood concept of the people is a central political goal. According to this, the German people must be preserved in their ethnic structure and “foreigners” must be excluded as far as possible. This contradicts the concept of the people in the Basic Law. There are also statements in which accusations of “repopulation” and “national death” are made.
From the AfD leadership, former Bundestag member Roman Reusch and Federal Treasurer Carsten Hütter were in court in Münster.
Judgment date still open
The OVG has scheduled a second day of negotiations for Wednesday. As of Tuesday afternoon, it was still unclear when there would be a verdict. The plaintiff was obviously preparing for a marathon session. In any case, the AfD team had cookies and drinks delivered to the courtroom at their own expense.
Before the start of the negotiations, the deputy AfD federal chairman, Peter Boehringer, answered the question on Deutschlandfunk about how the party would deal with a defeat. Given the scope of the questions to be clarified, a decision after a maximum of two days of oral negotiations would alone be reason enough for a revision. However, the Federal Administrative Court would only examine the OVG’s decision for possible legal errors. Questions about content no longer play a role there.
When asked about the negotiations in Berlin, the parliamentary managing director of the AfD parliamentary group, Bernd Baumann, said: “I’m completely relaxed about it. We’ll see what comes out of it and then we’ll continue on our path.”
The start of the negotiations was accompanied by protests against the AfD in the city center of Münster. The police had cordoned off a large area of the court building.
No request for a ban
The proceedings are not about banning a party. The Bremen government factions – SPD, Greens and Left – are seeking a ban on the AfD. The Bremen Senate should campaign for this at the federal level, the parliamentary groups announced last week. Only the Federal Constitutional Court can decide on such a ban – after an application from the Bundestag, Bundesrat or Federal Government.
In Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified the respective AfD regional association as a confirmed right-wing extremist effort. This now also applies to the JA and was confirmed by the Cologne Administrative Court. The AfD also wants to defend itself legally. However, this is not the subject of the proceedings in Münster. In current nationwide voter surveys, the AfD was recently at around 18 percent.