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The Cologne administrative court has prohibited the national secret service, until further notice, from monitoring the AfD as a whole and labeling it a “suspect case”. The tone of the decision shows how upset the judges are with the authority.
With a “pending decision”, the judges prohibited the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution from classifying the AfD as a suspicious case.
It is a shame for the German protection of the Constitution and indirectly also for the Federal Minister of the Interior: the Administrative Court of Cologne granted an urgent request from the AfD on Friday and prohibited the internal secret service from monitoring the party with immediate effect. The decision states that the authority headed by Thomas Haldenwang cannot “classify, observe, treat, examine and / or direct the AfD as a suspect case” until the overall decision is made. Nor does the office have the right to “publicly or not publicly re-announce” an AfD observation.
Protecting the constitution probably violated its promise.
Just two days ago, various media unanimously reported that since February 25 the entire AfD and not just individual state associations had been observed on suspicion of “extremist activities”. The court assumes that this information was “passed on” to the relevant media “in a manner attributable to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.” As a result, reporting is a serious usurpation of “equal opportunity for the parties”.
With such disclosure, the office would have violated its January “suspension promise”. At the time, the authority had guaranteed not to comment on the question of whether they were monitoring the AfD until they concluded the ongoing proceedings before the Cologne administrative court. On March 3, however, quotes and materials from an expert opinion of about a thousand pages were released. The two co-chairs of the AfD, Tino Chrupalla and Jörg Meuthen, later stated that the update to a suspicious case would be unfounded and would not go to court.
Now Meuthen sees himself confirmed: “The rule of law works, and that’s a good thing,” he said in an interview with NZZ. After this “loud slap in the face,” President Haldenwang was not the right man to head the office for the protection of the Constitution. He had provided his party with a large supply of “field ammunition”, which they gladly accepted. Rüdiger Lucassen, state spokesman for the North Rhine-Westphalia AfD, called the behavior of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution vis-à-vis the AfD “simply illegal”. The chairman of the AfD parliamentary group, Alexander Gauland, asked the rhetorical question in a press release: “Who will protect us from the protection of the constitution?”
Several courts ruled in favor of the AfD
In fact, the decision of the Cologne court seems to support the thesis defended by the AfD that the national secret service should be instrumentalized for political reasons. Haldenwang, a member of the CDU, assumed command of authority from Hans-Georg Maassen at the end of 2018. The latter was accused of engaging in the fight against right-wing extremism only with slowed foam. Haldenwang took this approach, and now suffered a bitter, self-inflicted legal defeat, which could also lead to turmoil for his employer. Haldenwang is said to have been the Chancellor’s favorite rather than the Interior Minister. However, as a superior, Seehofer is to be blamed for the secret service’s unprofessional approach.
On the other hand, the brief comment of the green politician Konstantin von Notz applies: “Postponed is not canceled.” It remains to be seen whether the AfD pursues extremist efforts. For the vice president of the FDP parliamentary group, Stephan Thomae, it is “indisputable that parts of the AfD reject and want to fight against our free democracy, if necessary with violence.”
The Cologne court decision is one of several positive court decisions for the AfD. On March 1, the Erfurt State Constitutional Court declared various provisions in the Crown ordinances following a lawsuit by the party’s Thuringian parliamentary group. the state government for illegal. On February 24, the Düsseldorf Administrative Court prohibited North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul of the CDU from publicly calling the AfD as a test case for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The “damaging effect on reputation” of this designation amounts to a violation of the fundamental rights of the parties. The Berlin Administrative Court ruled on February 22 that the Federal Ministry of the Interior had to delete a January tweet that indirectly referred to the AfD as a test case. As a result, the ministry intervened in the “freedom of the parties” protected by the Basic Law: reporting a simple test case was inadmissible.
Four state associations are suspect cases
For a suspected suspected case, the obstacles are even greater than for a test case. To become the first, there must be evidence that “a radical group is working for the elimination of the essential features of the free democratic basic order,” said Thomas Grumke and Rudolf van Hüllen in their standard work “The Protection of the Constitution.” . In Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Brandenburg, the AfD is already a suspect case. The fact that there are three East German federal states can be attributed to the strict right-wing drift of the regional associations there. In the list of Saxon candidates for the federal elections, for example, the radical camp recently won almost unanimously.
Party co-leader Meuthen, the protagonist of the moderates who has not suffered much in the East, reports after the Cologne decision of a “defiant determination” in the party as a whole. In this sense, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution could have succeeded at the moment when all the AfD presidents have failed: to unite the party.
