In the appeal process before the Münster Higher Administrative Court, an employee of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) admitted the use of undercover agents in the AfD. When the question arose about possible confidants of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution from the party’s environment, the representative said “that only two of the several thousand pieces of evidence” that had been submitted to the court “include statements or behavior from human sources of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.” These two receipts did not come from either the federal or state level and were incurred before 2023.
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The BfV also critically examined whether members of state or federal executive boards were appointed as confidants of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution who could have exercised “controlling influence”. The employee said that there was no such influence during the relevant period.
The Federal Office’s lawyer, Wolfgang Roth, said that the classification by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution should not only take criminally relevant statements into account. Rather, the benchmark is whether these are directed against the free, democratic basic order. It’s not about individual derailments by ordinary members, but about defamatory, denigrating statements made by officials or elected officials.
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The negotiation is about the question of whether the AfD as a party as a whole can be listed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected right-wing extremist case. In March 2022, the administrative court in Cologne dismissed a lawsuit brought against it by the AfD in the first instance.
The 5th Senate of the OVG should now clarify whether the lower court’s ruling is legal according to the Federal Constitutional Protection Act. The three appeal proceedings pending before the OVG also concern the classification of the AfD youth organization Junge Alternative (JA) and the so-called wing, which has now officially been dissolved.
The verdict could come on Wednesday
Two days were set aside for the trial. After around eleven hours, presiding judge Gerald Buck interrupted the hearing on Tuesday evening. A verdict could come on Wednesday.
In Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified the respective AfD regional association as a confirmed right-wing extremist effort. This now also applies to the JA and was confirmed by the Cologne Administrative Court. The AfD is also defending itself against this. However, this is not the subject of the proceedings in Münster. In nationwide voter surveys, the AfD was recently at around 18 percent.
In the appeal process before the Münster Higher Administrative Court, an employee of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) admitted the use of undercover agents in the AfD. When the question arose about possible confidants of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution from the party’s environment, the representative said “that only two of the several thousand pieces of evidence” that had been submitted to the court “include statements or behavior from human sources of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.” These two receipts did not come from either the federal or state level and were incurred before 2023.