Germany’s Christian Democrats want to ban Alternative for Germany

After the Alternative for Germany (AfD) blocked votes in the Thuringian state parliament, the Christian Democrats (CDU) have now launched a campaign to ban the AfD. The Social Democrats are following suit, paradoxically accusing the party of “aggressively and combatively taking action against parliamentarism”.

The AfD won a significant share of the vote in September’s state elections, an electoral success described as a “historic“. Last week, AfD politician Jürgen Treutler, 73, was given the honour of chairing the first session of the new parliamentary term as the oldest member of parliament. In doing so, Mr Treutler blocked motions and votes in a way that prevented the CDU and other parties from nominating a candidate for the speaker post.

The CDU protested against this behaviour and took the case to the Constitutional Court of Thuringia, where it was upheld. As a result, CDU politician Thadäus König was appointed as the new speaker of the state parliament.

Georg Maier, leader of the Thuringian Social Democrats and still acting interior minister, spoke out on Thursday in favour of going to the Federal Constitutional Court to have the AfD banned.

“Today’s events in the Thuringian state parliament have shown that the AfD is aggressively and combatively taking action against parliamentarism“, he wrote on X in connection with the incident

CDU MP Marco Wanderwitz has now launched a cross-party campaign for a joint motion for the Bundestag to vote on banning the opposition party. At least five per cent of MPs must support the motion, or 37 out of 733, for it to be tabled.

Germany’s Basic Law states, among other things, that parties that seek to “undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order” are unconstitutional, but it is up to the Federal Constitutional Court to decide whether or not a political party can be banned.

The so-called Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Thuringia has previously classified the AfD as “right-wing extremist”, but this is unlikely to be enough to ban a party outright, according to Azim Semizoglu, a constitutional law expert at the University of Leipzig.

– One cannot conclude that if a party is classified as definitely right-wing extremist, it is also unconstitutional in the sense of the Basic Law, he told German newspaper DW