Administrative court ruling - Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution may monitor AfD
The Bavarian Constitutional Protection Agency is allowed to monitor the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case. A complaint from the Bavarian state branch against the observation was dismissed by the Administrative Court Munich as unfounded. In the three-day oral hearing, the court identified concrete evidence of constitutionally hostile intentions within the AfD.
The evidence was sufficient and significant enough that the public could be informed, said the president of the 30th Chamber at the Administrative Court Munich, Michael Kumetz. He justified this, among other things, with statements that targeted Muslims and other people with a migration background or drew a comparison between today's German courts and those from the NS era. The court also mentioned statements that were based on an ethnic-biological understanding of the people. "Observing individual district branches would be too short-sighted," Kumetz said.
No appeal allowed at first
The AfD state chairman Stephan Protschka announced that the party would explore all legal options to challenge the decision. The court initially did not allow an appeal. This had to be applied for at the Bavarian Administrative Court of Appeals.
The observation of the AfD by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had already been ruled legal by the Higher Administrative Court Munster.
The Bavarian Constitutional Protection Agency had announced in 2022 that it would monitor the AfD with intelligence agency means because there were indications of unconstitutional activities. Against this, the AfD had initially filed a lawsuit in an expedited procedure and lost in two instances. In the main proceedings, the Constitutional Protection Agency stated that it would refrain from using undercover agents until the judicial clarification and only use publicly accessible sources to substantiate the suspicion of right-wing extremist tendencies.
Court: No individual verbal outbursts
The AfD side argued during the proceedings that the listed extremist statements were nothing more than individual verbal outbursts that had always been sanctioned by the party - for example, with expulsion proceedings and bans on holding office - or that had already been resolved through party resignations for the AfD. "The respectable statements of the AfD representatives do not only represent themselves as individual verbal outbursts," said the presiding judge Kumetz.
Bavaria's Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) said after the judgment that it was now important to closely monitor the further development of the AfD. "The Free State of Bavaria has also strengthened the observation of right-wing and left-wing extremists, as well as Islamists, by increasing the personnel of the Constitutional Protection Agency," said the CSU politician to the German Press Agency in Munich.
- The decision to monitor the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case in Bavaria was upheld by the Munich Administrative Court, overturning a complaint from the state branch.
- The court's judgment highlighted multiple instances of constitutionally hostile intentions within the AfD, including statements targeting Muslims and comparisons to Nazi-era courts.
- The Bavarian AfD state chairman, Stephan Protschka, stated that the party would explore legal options to challenge the decision, with an initial appeal denied and required at the Bavarian Administrative Court of Appeals.
- Previously, the Higher Administrative Court in Munster had ruled that the observation of the AfD by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution was legal.
- The Bavarian Constitutional Protection Agency announced in 2022 that it would monitor the AfD with intelligence agency means due to indications of unconstitutional activities, with the AfD losing lawsuits in both expedited and main proceedings.
- In response to the court's judgments, Bavaria's Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann emphasized the importance of closely monitoring the AfD's further development and the Strengthening of observations on right-wing, left-wing extremists, and Islamists in Bavaria.
