Germany: Group of MPs Wants to Call for AfD Ban

According to German newspaper Die Welt, at least 37 members of the Bundestag would like to initiate a procedure to ban the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The parliamentarians want to go to the German Constitutional Court against the party that has been the protagonist of recent elections, particularly the last election in Brandenburg, where it won 29.2% of the vote. Supporters include members of the Socialists, Christian Democrats, Greens, and the left-wing Linke party. They are reportedly working on a petition to initiate proceedings before the Federal Constitutional Court. A group motion is supported by individual MPs, not entire parliamentary groups.

In fact, doubts about the move came from Gesine Schwan, president of the Commission for Fundamental Socialist Values (SPD). “A demand for a ban would now be politically counterproductive,” she explained to Die Welt, “it would push even more citizens into the arms of AfD,” while representatives of the same party, Juliane Kleemann and Andreas Schmidt, emphasized that a fact of this type must be “based on a legally safe procedure” with exhaustive evidence, “clearly demonstrating that the party as a whole is consciously and systematically working against the basic free democratic order.”