Federal administrative court suspends enforcement of "compact" ban
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) had banned the magazine in July, with simultaneous raids on its business premises and private residences. The ministry justified the ban by stating that the Compact magazine GmbH rejects the constitutional order and has an anti-constitutional stance.
Faeser had described the magazine at the time as "a central mouthpiece of the right-wing extremist scene." It was inciting "in an unsavory manner against Jewish women and Jews, against people with a migration background, and against our parliamentary democracy."
The Compact magazine GmbH, led by activist Jürgen Elsässer, filed both a lawsuit and an urgent application against the ban with the Federal Administrative Court. The urgent application has been partially successful. The magazine can continue to be published provisionally until a decision is made on the lawsuit. However, the seized evidence can still be evaluated.
The court stated after an initial review that the prospects of success of the lawsuit are open. It cannot yet be finally assessed whether "Compact" is directed against the constitutional order. While there are indications of a violation of human dignity in individual texts, the court doubts, in view of freedom of opinion and the press, whether these text passages are so dominant that they justify a ban.
It pointed out that there are also milder means - such as event bans, location- and event-specific speech bans, and restrictions and bans on assemblies. After the first balancing in the urgent procedure, the interest of "Compact" in suspending the immediate execution of the ban outweighs the public interest in this immediate execution.
Chief Editor Elsässer described the urgent decision on the online service X on Wednesday as "a victory." A decision "will only be made in the main proceedings, and we will also win that," he wrote.
The Interior Ministry, on the other hand, stated that it had "comprehensively justified and proven with comprehensive evidence from the security authorities the anti-constitutional, aggressive-fighting behavior of the Compact magazine GmbH." It will continue to present its legal opinion in the main proceedings "and further substantiate the dominant character of anti-constitutionality."
The German Journalists' Association (DJV) saw in the decision a "clear commitment of the court to the basic right of freedom of the press."
The FDP member of the German Bundestag, Ann-Veruschka Jurisch, said to the newspaper "Welt": "As little as I share the contents of 'Compact', so much can I understand that the Federal Administrative Court holds the protection of freedom of opinion and the press to be predominant in the provisional procedure."
The Left saw the decision of the Federal Administrative Court as "proof of a functioning rule of law," as the spokesperson for internal affairs of the group in the Bundestag, Martina Renner, said to the newspaper.
I'm not going to sugarcoat it, the ban on Compact magazine was a contentious issue. Despite the Interior Ministry's claims, the Federal Administrative Court has indicated that the prospects of success in the lawsuit are open, suggesting a more nuanced view of the situation.
