Court ruling - Office for the Protection of the Constitution may monitor AfD in Bavaria
The Bavarian Constitutional Protection Agency is allowed to monitor the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case. The complaint of the Bavarian state branch against the observation was dismissed by the Administrative Court Munich as unfounded. The AfD state chairman Stephan Protschka had announced at the beginning of the hearing that he wanted to exhaust all instances.
The evidence is sufficient and weighty enough that the public could be informed, said the chairman of the 30th Chamber at the Administrative Court Munich, Michael Kumetz. He justified this, for example, with statements that targeted Muslims and other people with a migration background or compared current German courts with those from the NS era. "Observing individual district branches would be too short-sighted," said Kumetz.
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.
AfD Bavaria sues and loses
The Bavarian Constitutional Protection Agency announced in 2022 that it would monitor the AfD using surveillance methods because there were indications of unconstitutional activities. The AfD initially filed a lawsuit in an expedited procedure and lost in two instances. The main hearing was held at the Administrative Court.
The Constitutional Protection Agency presented the court with extensive evidence, including thousands of pages of chat protocols. From the material, it should become clear that the suspicion of right-wing extremist tendencies and therefore the observation is justified.
"Derailments of Individuals"
The AfD website argued during the proceedings that the listed extremist statements were those of individuals who had been sanctioned by the party – for example, with expulsion proceedings and bans – or who had left the AfD for themselves.
- Despite the AfD's lawsuit, the Administrative Court Munich ruled that the Bavarian Constitutional Protection Agency's monitoring of the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case was justified, citing statements targeting Muslims and other migrants, as well as comparisons to Nazi-era courts, as evidence.
- The dismissal of the Bavarian state branch's complaint against the AfD's observation by the Munich Administrative Court was upheld by the Higher Administrative Court in Munster, making the Bavaria branch's legal challenges unsuccessful in both instances.
- In the final hearing at the Administrative Court, AfD Bavaria's chairman, Stephan Protschka, pledged to exhaust all available legal options to challenge the surveillance, following the ruling that allowed the Bavarian Constitutional Protection Agency to monitor the party.
- The Bavarian Constitutional Protection Agency's decision to monitor the AfD was also supported by a previous court ruling, as the Higher Administrative Court in Munster had already deemed the observation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as lawful.
