The AfD wanted to prevent the court from classifying it as a suspected case. Now the lawsuit has been dismissed. The AfD boss is “surprised”.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution may classify the AfD as a suspected case. The administrative court in Cologne decided on Tuesday evening after a hearing that lasted almost ten hours and thus dismissed a lawsuit by the AfD.
The court explained that there were sufficient indications of anti-constitutional efforts within the party.
The verdict is not yet final, and an appeal can be lodged against the decision. The Higher Administrative Court in Münster would then have to decide on this. For formal reasons, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution cannot yet begin with the corresponding observation, as an urgent procedure is also pending in the same matter. Here, however, a decision with a similar content is to be expected, according to judicial circles.
The court referred to reports and collections of material from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Although the so-called wing of the party was formally dissolved, its protagonists continued to exert significant influence. The activities of the youth organization Junge Alternative (JA) were also included in the assessment. Both in the wing and in the YA, an ethnically understood concept of the people is a central political goal. According to this, the German people must be preserved in their ethnic composition and “foreigners” must be excluded as far as possible. This contradicts the concept of people in the Basic Law.
dispute within the party
There are also announcements in which “Umvolkungs” and “Volkstod” allegations are raised. In addition, a xenophobic agitation can be seen. The AfD is currently in a directional dispute in which anti-constitutional efforts could prevail.
AfD boss Tino Chrupalla was surprised by the verdict. “We do not share the opinion of the court. We will now wait for the written reasons for the verdict, »he said shortly after the announcement. Of course he was disappointed too. “Of course.” He announced that one would now examine to what extent one would proceed against the verdict.
The AfD was successful with its lawsuit against the fact that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had publicly announced that the wing had 7,000 members. There is not enough evidence for that, the court said. Equally successful was the AfD’s lawsuit against the upgrade of the wing to a “secure extremist effort”. According to the judges, this classification is inadmissible after the formal dissolution of the wing, since it requires certainty about the existence of the observation object.
Protection of the Constitution: Wing has great influence
However, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution admitted during the hearing that it was not certain whether the wing still existed as a merger. Without a doubt, however, his ideology has a great influence on the party. The court also prohibited the Office for the Protection of the Constitution from continuing to publicly state that the wing had been classified as a “secure extremist effort”.
A fourth lawsuit, with which the AfD turned against the classification of the correctional institution as a suspected case, was unsuccessful. The court ruled that there were actually sufficient indications of anti-constitutional efforts within the correctional institution. These other judgments can also be appealed.
Before that, there had been a legal exchange of blows in court between the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the AfD. Due to the great public interest, the court had rented the so-called Crystal Hall of the Cologne Exhibition Center in view of the corona pandemic. AfD boss Chrupalla also appeared and spoke up from time to time. For the most part, however, the lawyer Christian Conrad defended the position of the AfD.
The protection of the constitution argued, among other things, with statements by the former AfD party leader Jörg Meuthen. Meuthen’s exit from the party shows that the so-called wing within the party is becoming more and more popular. The lawyer for the protection of the constitution, Wolfgang Roth, described in detail the great influence that the wing – although officially dissolved – continues to exercise. Several state associations in East Germany are clearly wing-oriented. One cannot reduce the current around the wing to the Thuringian AfD country chief Björn Höcke and his immediate followers.
“The wing supporters were all AfD members,” said Roth. And most of them are still in the party. With the dissolution of the wing, these people are not excluded from the party. Rather, they are found in prominent functions.
AfD lawyer: wings no longer important
AfD lawyer Conrad, on the other hand, insisted: “Today, the wing plays no role at all in the AfD.” The Thuringian AfD boss and wing founder Björn Höcke gets a lot of media attention, but he only leads a single state association, Chrupalla added. Höcke never aspired to leadership of the party as a whole – he also knows that he would not have a majority behind him to do so. In a demonstratively cheerful mood, Chrupalla expressly invited the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to take part in events and party meetings in order to convince themselves that the AfD was not extremist.
Judge Michael Huschens made it clear even before his verdict that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is an “early warning system”. “If you have soil that smells of oil, you can drill test holes,” he says. A well-fortified democracy should not wait until “the child has fallen into the well”.
Source: Stern
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