The Bundestag could ask the Federal Constitutional Court to examine the constitutionality of the AfD. But a cross -faction application for this no majority. The debate is highly emotional – also because the previous day left traces.
The AfD continues to determine the political debate in the Bundestag. One day after the first majority procurement of an Union application with AfD votes, the Bundestag debates the cross-faction application in the evening, according to which the Bundestag should prepare a test application for a ban on the AfD. The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe would have to decide on the ban itself. In addition to the federal government and the Federal Council, the Bundestag can ask the judges for examination – and deliver evidence. However, despite 124 members of the Bundestag from the SPD, Greens, CDU and the left, seems unlikely that it will be foreseeable.
“We as the applicant are convinced that the AfD is not a party that is just a bit right,” says Saxon CDU MP Marco Wanderwitz as the first speaker in the debate. “They are constitutional enemies. They are enemies of freedom democracy. They are misanthropists.” Wanderwitz is one of the initiators of the application, but is largely isolated in their own faction – not only with this request. Accordingly, he had not voted with the Union for the five-point plan of Union Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, to whom the AfD had given the majority to the horror of the SPD, the Greens and the left.
Wanderwitz, who also does not run again for permanent hostility against himself and the CDU MP Yvonne Magwas, who is married to him, sees the anti-constitutionality of the AfD. Among other things, he relies on a not yet final judgment by the Higher Administrative Court in Münster. This had dismissed AfD lawsuits against its classification as a right-wing suspicion by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution-and, among other things, rely on the AfD's Völkisch-Cultural Citizenship, which is not in accordance with the Basic Law.
Amthor: Union is too risky test application
This is also referring to the SPD MP Carmen Wegge: “You reveal an ethical-cultural understanding of folk that runs counter to the elementary legal equality,” says Wegge in the direction of AfD parliamentary group. But also in the ranks of the Social Democrats there is no majority for the test application. The SPD MP Maja Wallstein, who is permanently confronted with right-wing extremists in and around Cottbus in and around Cottbus, cannot understand: It is a “minimum service”, for which voters do not ensure that the AfD does not have an unconstitutional party stand by the ballot paper. And in the direction of the AfD, Wallstein asks: “Which democratic party fears the review of its constitutionality?”
But the debate also makes it clear why there is no broad support for the request of a ban on prohibition by the Bundestag at the SPD, Union and FDP. “In its majority, my parliamentary group considers the path of prohibition procedure to be too risky in accordance with Article 21 of the Basic Law,” says CDU MP Philipp Amthor from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. “It is lengthy, it is complex and we are convinced that there are better answers from our defensive democracy.” Wallstein contradicts that the content of the AfD can be combated independently of one another and at the same time had their constitutionality checked.
Amthor, in turn, makes it clear that despite other opinion than that of the applicants, he generally shares their assessment of the AfD: “The AfD and its leading officials are in large parts – and in recent years it has been increasingly – anti -Semitic, racist, hostile to women And just right -wing extremists. “
FDP worried about AfD voters
Constantine Kuhle, who speaks for the FDP parliamentary group, sounds similarly: “I myself am convinced that the AfD is characterized today in significant parts of people who are hostile to our constitutional order and the democratic post-war development of our country.” He therefore understands the considerations behind the ban on the ban. But a lot of AfD voters are not right-wing extremists, but “people who are worried”. More control in migration policy, a better economic development are “legitimate concerns,” says Kuhle. “To agree to these applications today, that would mean breaking off the conversation with these people from one day to the other.” The frustration of these people would only be stronger due to a ban procedure.
Other speakers of the Union also referred to an uncertainty of the procedure and a counterproductive signal if the Bundestag exemplies a ban on a ban on a ban on a federal election.
AfD: Only “ridiculous anecdotal evidence”
As expected, outrage comes from the ranks of the AfD about the request of a test application. There is no evidence of an anti-constitutionality of the AfD, the AfD MP Peter Boehringer is outraged, but only “ridiculous anecdotal evidence”. It remains unclear whether Boehringer also means the role of AfD officials among the alleged Reich citizens' terrorists around Prince Reuss or the alleged right-wing terrorists “Saxon separatists”. In any case, Boehringer sees a ban on his party: “For an exclusion of twelve million votes due to a party ban, the Basic Law would be much more.”
Boehringer also doubts the independence of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, after its head, Thomas Haldenwang, wants to move into the Bundestag for the CDU. “According to this logic, CDU-Haldenwang would have to observe the CDU extremist Friedrich Merz immediately,” Boehringer mocked with a view to coordinating AfD and CDU the day before.
The Thuringian AfD MP Stephan Brandner is experiencing the speaker: he assumes that the applicants assume “pathological frustration on already events and/or upcoming loss of mandate”. Then Brandner increases: “You are a jealous clique of political officials and farmsters of the powerful, who would do everything to get rid of us,” says Brandner. “They don't want to struggle for the best solutions. They want to destroy us. They want to see blood.”
Probably no vote before the election
Brandner is an order call from Bundestag Vice President Petra Pau in the course of the debate. He had insulted the parliamentary group as “social fascists”. There are interjections from almost all directions in the course of the debate. The mood is heated up, because speakers from the SPD and the Greens also remind the rows of Union and FDP again and again of their coordination together with the AfD.
Green politician Ricarda Lang asks the Union colleagues what it was doing with her “self-respect” after she had made the AfD “handlong” on the day of the Holocaust commemoration in the Bundestag. Merz did not even try to get a majority without AfD for his migration policy demands. “When Friedrich Merz says' Friss or Die, otherwise I will do it with the Nazis,” says Lang, that is “not an offer, that is blackmail.”
After the previous day, the path to a majority for a ban on ban on a ban has become more improbable. You will probably no longer find out in this legislative period. In view of the lack of approval, the applicants have agreed to have their applications transferred back to the responsible committee. Because there is also a second application that at least suggests the creation of an independent report on the AfD. But also for this: no majority. It is almost excluded that something will happen before the Bundestag election on February 23. And what the majority of the Bundestag will look like can certainly predict no one after this turbulent, historical plenary week.
