Bremen has crossed an unprecedented political line in Germany. The city-state, governed by a coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and the Left, has become the first region to formally push for the populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) to be outlawed. The move comes despite the party finishing second in February’s federal election and continuing to rise in the polls since then.
However, the coalition led by Andreas Bovenschulte of the Social Democrats wants to bring the case before the Constitutional Court, with the backing of the federal government and a coordinated offensive in the Bundesrat, the upper house of the German parliament.
All of this is based on the recent classification of the AfD as a “far-right extremist” group by the German intelligence service, the BfV.. A move that AfD itself has already challenged in court, denouncing it as a case of “political persecution” disguised in legal terms.
“We want to avoid being accused one day of having acted too late,” Mustafa Güngör, head of the Social Democratic parliamentary group, said when presenting the measure. He claimed the AfD represents a real threat to the democratic order. The enthusiasm in Bremen is such that all the coalition parties signed the urgent motion without hesitation, underlining their determination to “keep up the pressure” to outlaw Germany’s fastest-growing political party.
However, other regional leaders are not sure this is such a good idea. In North Rhine-Westphalia, regional president Hendrik Wüst of the center-right CDU insisted that a ban is only legitimate if there is irrefutable legal proof that the party wants to overthrow the democratic order. And in Bavaria, Markus Söder of the conservative CSU was blunt: “Rather than banning AfD, we must defeat it politically.”
German history is full of lessons about the dangers of institutional overreaction. The failed attempts to outlaw parties, as happened with the genuinely neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD), showed just how high the legal bar is in these cases. Political declarations or administrative classifications are not enough; there must be clear evidence that the party in question is actively working to subvert democracy. For the AfD, the reality seems quite the opposite: those trying to subvert democracy are, in fact, the ones seeking to ban parties that have committed no crime other than going against the establishment.
The case in Hesse gives a sense of the atmosphere that is brewing. There, two AfD deputies were excluded at the last minute from an official mission to Serbia and Croatia. The justification was that, since the party is classified as extremist, it was “unacceptable” for them to represent the German state abroad. The affected deputies spoke of “hypocrisy” and denounced yet another episode of political marginalization.
In politics, the temptation to resort to judicial means to eliminate an adversary can seem attractive in the short term, but it often has side effects that are hard to control. Outlawing a party, especially if the ban is based on shaky evidence, may end up just strengthening support for that party even further.
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