The Federal Administrative Court partially suspends the ban on the Compact magazine. The Interior Minister receives a slap in the face. Right-wing extremist Elsässer celebrates – and can hope for more.
Jürgen Elsässer is in a celebratory mood on Wednesday afternoon. “Victory, victory, victory,” he shouts into the camera and raises his right fist. In the post under the video, which he published on the platform X, he writes: “Champagne is beheaded!”
A few minutes earlier, the judges at the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig had, one might say, given him a gift: They had partially suspended the ban on Elsässer’s “Compact” magazine. The right-wing extremist paper is now allowed to publish again – at least for the time being.
So Elsässer actually has good reasons to pop the champagne corks. Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD), on the other hand, has a new problem child as of today.
Looking back: On July 16, police officers, acting on Faeser’s instructions, searched the offices and houses of the Compact publishing house and its leading figures in Brandenburg, Hesse, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt early in the morning. The officers also searched Elsässer’s house in Falkensee near Berlin. They confiscated documents and data storage devices. The picture of Elsässer in a bathrobe at his front door made the rounds in the German press.
Elsässer can win against Faeser
Shortly afterwards, Faeser announced the ban on Compact-Magazin GmbH, the publisher of the magazine of the same name. She also banned all of the company’s activities with immediate effect. The magazine has not been allowed to appear since then.
Compact’s lawsuit against the ban before the Federal Administrative Court did not change this at first. Until now. Now, at Compact’s request, the court has suspended the enforcement of the ban in an expedited procedure.
Elsässer’s magazine is therefore allowed to appear again at least until the decision on the actual lawsuit is made. And the court indicated that Compact could also win this against the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI). When examining the ban, “the chances of success of the lawsuit are open,” the court wrote in a press release.
In right-wing radical and extreme right-wing circles, the decision on Wednesday was immediately declared a victory for press freedom over an authoritarian state. AfD leader Alice Weidel called for Faeser’s resignation. “For her brazen attack on press freedom, Nancy Faeser must resign or be fired,” Weidel wrote on X. Elsässer herself even interpreted the decision as a “victory of democracy over dictatorship,” of the “people over the regime.”
Kubicki attacks Faeser sharply
One can dismiss this as the expected noise from the far-right. But there was also criticism from the ranks of the traffic light factions. “Constitutional Minister Nancy Faeser has stepped onto extremely thin legal ice and has broken through,” Kubicki told the Tagesspiegel. “If she also fails in the main proceedings, that will be it.”
In fact, the decision is a slap in the face for Faeser.
The court did agree with her on one point: that association law also applies to media companies. This was initially doubted, including by journalists. According to association law, companies that go against the “constitutional order” can be banned.
However, the judges had doubts as to whether Compact had the necessary characteristics to justify a ban on the entire organization. Instead, milder measures should be considered, such as “bans on events, bans on statements related to locations and events, and restrictions and bans on gatherings.”
“BMI has not done its homework”
Legal expert Benjamin Lück criticised the magazine Stern: “According to the Federal Administrative Court, the Federal Ministry of the Interior did not do its homework and at least did a sloppy job in the initial justification for the ban.”
Lück works for the Society for Civil Rights, which campaigns for the protection of fundamental rights. “The authorities should have first used milder means than a ban. Or at least given good reasons why these would not have helped to take action against Compact.”
The court’s decision shows “that as a state you have to be extremely cautious with media bans. This is only possible in exceptional cases and with very good reasons, and that is also the right thing to do in the interests of press freedom,” said Lück. The fact that this has now been shown by a lawsuit brought by a right-wing extremist organization is “regrettable.”
The Federal Administrative Court did see evidence of statements in Compact publications that violated human dignity. In addition, “many articles display a combative, aggressive attitude toward elementary constitutional principles,” as the court put it in its press release. However, it is not clear whether these statements are “so influential for Compact as a whole that the ban is justified on the grounds of proportionality.”
For Lück, this reasoning is understandable. Some of the anti-constitutional statements that Compact is accused of were made by Jürgen Elsässer at events – and not in publishing products. “The Federal Administrative Court is now telling the BMI: ‘You must explain why you cannot ban individual Compact events, but must ban the entire organization,'” explains the lawyer.
Two crucial questions remain
This raises two crucial legal questions for the decision on Compact’s actual lawsuit: firstly, whether the individual anti-constitutional statements are sufficient to classify Compact magazine as a whole as an anti-constitutional medium. And secondly, whether a ban is actually the mildest necessary legal remedy that the BMI can use against it.
The fact that the Federal Administrative Court will uphold Compact’s lawsuit and declare Faeser’s ban unlawful has been a real scenario since Wednesday at the latest. “At the moment, things are not looking bad for Jürgen Elsässer, even if it is only an expedited procedure,” Lück also believes. But he still sees a chance for the minister: the data and documents seized during the raids on July 16. “This could provide further evidence that, from the court’s point of view, would justify a ban. But that is pure speculation.”
Compact boss Elsässer spoke on Wednesday of “two to three years” in which they could “continue working in peace” until a verdict on the lawsuit is reached. In Lück’s opinion, this is not unrealistic: “The Federal Administrative Court will certainly want to make a decision quickly. But it will take one to two years.”
Politically, the damage has already been done.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
