Just one week ahead of the state election in Saxony-Anhalt, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) and the Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, Cem Özdemir (Greens), have publicly advocated for filing a ban application against regional chapters of the AfD party that have been categorized as nationalist or far-right.
In a joint statement provided to the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” (FAS), Özdemir and Pistorius urged for the earliest possible commencement of a ban procedure, focusing specifically on the AfD chapters in Thuringia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Brandenburg. They stressed that, based on their personal convictions, taking this action is both legally possible and constitutes a duty demanded by the constitution.
According to reports from the FAS, the green politician and the social democratic defense minister have held this opinion for some time. Given their high ranking among the most popular politicians in Germany according to various polls, they appear to be leveraging their influence to issue a serious warning against the AfD and promote the idea of a ban.
A ban application can be filed by the federal government, the Bundestag, or the Bundesrat. Conversely, the CDU is currently opposing any ban on the AfD, even on a regional level, as both the CDU and CSU do not want the election campaigns in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to be overshadowed by a ban debate.
However, Özdemir and Pistorius believe that this discussion must happen before the AfD potentially wins crucial elections. They anticipate the ban debate will continue even after the state elections, at which point they rely on the support of CDU state leaders, including Hendrik Wüst of North Rhine-Westphalia and Daniel Günther of Schleswig-Holstein.
The pair drew a sharp distinction between the “German-national” and the more “völkisch” parts of the AfD. While they believe the “German-national” demands can be addressed through counterarguments, they label the “völkisch” views of the party as “naive,” arguing that these perspectives are deliberately obscured by the party itself.
