Following the electoral successes of the AfD, Jürgen Trittin, the former Federal Minister for the Environment (Greens), has called for the targeted prohibition of several state chapters of the party. Trittin told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” that measures must be taken to specifically ban AfD state chapters that are openly acting unconstitutionally. He highlighted the chapters in Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Lower Saxony as being securely right-wing and stressed that the necessary path is to prohibit such parties.
The former Green politician views such a procedure as legally sound. Trittin bases his argument on the second ban ruling concerning the NPD by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2017. At that time, the court had ruled that while the NPD was undeniably anti-constitutional, it had not been banned because of its politically insignificant role-principally stating that one should “not shoot canons at sparrows.”
Trittin further argued that if this legal logic is applied to the AfD, it cannot be argued that the party is too insignificant to merit a ban.
