Will Germany's far-right AfD party be banned?

Their chance of success is uncertain, but a cross-party group of Bundestag parliamentarians, led by lawmaker Marco Wanderwitz of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) is attempting it anyway: On Thursday, 37 lawmakers announced that they would seek to ban the partially right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD). Together, they represent 5% of parliament — a requirement to take their initiative to the next stage: a parliamentary vote which, if passed, would bring the matter before the Federal Constitutional Court.

"After the terrible rule of the National Socialists [Nazis], it is important to prevent a party which is in large parts right-wing extremist and ethno-nationalist from becoming powerful in Germany again," said Wanderwitz.

Carmen Wegge, a lawmaker with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) agrees. "In Germany, democracy has already once been abolished by democratic means, and our continent was plunged into ruin," she said.

The AfD already has considerable influence. The party has 77 lawmakers in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, and it even became the largest party in the eastern state of Thuringia following elections there in September. The AfD also won large shares of the vote in two other eastern states, Saxony and Brandenburg, in elections in September.

However, AfD participation in the governments of any of those states is extremely unlikely because the other parties refuse to work with them to build the necessary coalitions.

Timeframe for procedures

The initiators of the current proposal to ban the AfD expect that it will be put to the vote in the Bundestag in December or January. The group includes politicians from the CDU, SPD, Greens and Left parties. Reaching a majority of the 736 lawmakers will take a lot of convincing.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is among the many who are skeptical about whether it is smart to ban the AfD, which is represented in 14 of Germany's 16 state parliaments, the European Parliament as well as the Bundestag, because simply banning the AfD won't change its voters' convictions.

That view is shared by the President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster. Before the Brandenburg election on September 22, he told the Tagesspiegel daily: "The people who vote for the AfD today will not simply disappear — and we cannot ignore them." He said he believed a ban was not the way to dissuade AfD voters from their ideology.

Stefan Seidler, the lone member of the South Schleswig Voters' Association (SSW) party in the Bundestag, which represents the country's Danish minority, supports the plan for a ban regardless. He told DW: "You can recognize an enemy of democracy by the way they deal with minorities. Cracks in the democratic foundations of our society become evident for minorities early on. Our democracy needs to be well fortified. As democrats, we are obliged to use all the tools we have available. This includes the inspection in Karlsruhe [the seat of the Federal Constitutional Court]."

Expert opinions differ

Experts hold differing views on how likely the attempt to ban the AfD is to succeed. Hendrik Cremer of the German Institute for Human Rights in Berlin believes a ban is urgently needed and could be successful. "If you look at the AfD closely, I think you have to come to the conclusion that the conditions for a ban are met," he told DW in May, adding that he finds it difficult to understand why some still express any doubts.

Azim Semizoglu, a constitutional law expert at the University of Leipzig, is more skeptical. In his view, the classification of the AfD as "definitely right-wing extremist" by Germany's domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), does not automatically guarantee a successful ban, he previously told DW. That is only one piece of evidence among many, Semizoglu argued. "You can't conclude from it that if a party is classified as a definitely right-wing extremist, it is also unconstitutional in the sense of the Basic Law," he said.

Renowned legal scholar Ulrich Battis told DW: "The ban is clearly defined: Article 21 of the Basic Law [Germany's constitution] provides the possibility for this from the outset. It must concern an active campaign against the free democratic order. The party's aim must be to overcome the political system."

The failed attempt to ban the NPD

To weigh the pros and cons of banning the AfD, it is worth looking at the failed attempt to ban the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany NPD. In the 2017 verdict on that case, the constitutional court ruled that the former NPD was indeed unconstitutional, but also politically insignificant. "In the more than five decades of its existence, the NPD has not managed to be permanently represented in a state parliament," it said.

In addition, the other parties in the federal and state parliaments had been unwilling to form coalitions or even to cooperate with the NPD on specific issues, the court stated at the time. That last point also applies in the case of the AfD, at least so far. However, the first argument does not. The AfD is an influential force, even without being part of any government.

The successful move to ban the KPD

However, there is precedent for Germany banning a political party during the post-war era. The German communist party (KPD) was banned in 1956 although it had won representation in the West German Bundestag. It was the second party ban in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany after the openly neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party (SRP) was banned in 1952. It led to the forced dissolution of the first German Communist Party (KPD), the withdrawal of its political mandates, the ban on the founding of substitute organizations and legal proceedings against thousands of members.

Marcel Fürstenau contributed to this article.

This article was originally written in German.

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