Can the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution list the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case? The legal battle over this issue continues. The appeal proceedings before the OVG Münster were postponed on Wednesday.
Münster (epd). The Office for the Protection of the Constitution can initially continue to classify the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case: The party’s appeal against the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) before the North Rhine-Westphalian Higher Administrative Court (OVG) in Münster remained without a verdict after two long days of negotiations. The court postponed the oral hearing on Wednesday evening; a date for the continuation has not yet been set. The AfD lawyers had drawn out the proceedings with numerous applications; on Wednesday, witnesses brought by the party were even heard.
The proceedings before the Higher Administrative Court in Münster concern the question of whether the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution rightly classified the entire AfD, its youth organization “Junge Alternative” and the now disbanded “Wing” as suspected right-wing extremist cases (AZ: 5 A 1218/22 , AZ: 5 A 1217/22 and AZ: 5 A 1216/22). In 2022, the Cologne Administrative Court confirmed this classification as legal. The AfD appealed against the verdict.
On Wednesday, the AfD requested, among other things, an interruption of the meeting for at least six weeks. The reason given was that a statement from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the proceedings had revealed new circumstances. The BfV lawyer then again accused the AfD of delaying the process. This was eloquently rejected by the AfD lawyers.
An AfD lawyer announced that he would submit several hundred applications for evidence. This is necessary because the appointment before the Higher Administrative Court is the last instance at which the content of the matter can be clarified. After the presiding judge Gerald Buck no longer wanted to allow similar applications for evidence, the AfD filed a motion for bias against the presiding judge, but this was rejected. The court also rejected a request to exclude the public.
It was only on Wednesday afternoon that the content was discussed, in particular the accusation that the AfD had an ethnic and ethnic concept of the people. At the suggestion of Roman Reusch, a member of the AfD federal executive board, three AfD members with a migration background were heard as witnesses. The lawyer for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Wolfgang Roth, criticized the AfD’s concept of the people, which was based on ethnic categories, and pointed out that the party discriminated against naturalized Germans as “passport Germans”. Despite their legal affiliation with Germany, the AfD does not count these people as part of the German people.
A 46-year-old native Nigerian who had lived in Germany since 2002 said as a witness named by the AfD that she had been a member of the AfD since 2022 and was the spokesperson for a local association in Hesse. She went into politics because of changes in crime and high immigration numbers. The German-Greek Hessian AfD chairman Robert Lambrou and a man from Iran spoke as further witnesses. The Hessian state association of the AfD is also classified as a suspected right-wing extremist case.
In 2019, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Cologne classified the “Young Alternative for Germany” as a suspected case of right-wing extremism. In April last year, the BfV announced that, based on further findings, the AfD youth organization was now classified as a confirmed right-wing extremist effort. The AfD and the “Junge Alternative” filed a lawsuit against the suspected case decision in June 2023.
Only two days were scheduled for the oral hearing. According to the ruling of the Higher Administrative Court, which is still outstanding, an appeal would still be possible, which the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig would have to decide on. However, the judgment would only be checked for legal errors.