The briefs that are sent back and forth between the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, AfD and the court sometimes fill several moving boxes. Because of this and because the election date is now getting closer, the judge wants more time.
It will no longer be clarified before the federal elections in the autumn whether the protection of the constitution may target the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case.
The Cologne administrative court announced that due to the high complexity of the procedure and out of “respect for the decision of the voters”, no decision would be taken before September 26th in the urgent proceedings that have been running since January.
The AfD had already turned to the court as a precaution in January to prevent it from being classified as a suspected case. The President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, for his part, informed the constitutional protection officers of the federal states in a video conference internally about the upgrading of the party to a suspected case. He did not announce anything publicly. When the information about the state authorities nevertheless leaked to the public, the court forbade the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to publicly or not publicly announce 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 alliance, which it believes is still going on, 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 by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as right-wing extremist tendencies, 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.
“The chamber intends to take decisions in the main proceedings in the first quarter of 2022 after an oral hearing and to decide on the urgent proceedings,” the Cologne court announced. The reason given was that, given the importance of the proceedings, a “summary examination of the facts” was not sufficient.
This means that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is initially not allowed to monitor the party as a whole by means of intelligence services. This includes the use of so-called informers and other methods of secret information gathering. Before the end of the procedure, the authority is 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 Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Alexander Leschik, author of the book (“Im Bann der AfD”) and former member of the party, said he had, as a member of the AfD’s working group on the protection of the constitution, been given an insight into two chapters of the report on which the court proceedings are concerned. He told the dpa: “The report makes it very clear that the verbal derailments do not only affect some officials. It is by no means the case that the base would be more moderate overall than the national leadership ». In North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, AfD membership has changed in recent years. “Many moderates got out, more radical members came in,” said Leschik.
The AfD federal executive will deal with controversial statements by a Bundestag candidate from North Rhine-Westphalia in a chat next Monday. As a party spokesman confirmed on request, Matthias Helferich’s statements submitted to the party leadership will be discussed at the weekly conference call next Monday. In North Rhine-Westphalia, Helferich was elected to the promising seventh place on the list of candidates for the federal election on September 26th. He is one of two deputy chairmen of the NRW regional association.
Haldenwang said in an interview with the German Press Agency last December: “Our legal mandate is also to inform the population about anti-constitutional efforts. That is one of the lessons from the Weimar Republic, which also failed because of its parties. We must also be able to inform the public in the run-up to an election if we perceive anti-constitutional efforts of any kind. “
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 dpa information, the court had previously proposed to those involved in the proceedings, in view of the scope of the files and because of the upcoming election, to forego decisions in the urgent procedure and to continue directly with an oral hearing in the first quarter of 2022. According to reports, the AfD was in favor, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution rejected it for various reasons.
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