German Bundestag parties are looking for seemingly undemocratic methods to stop the national-conservative AfD, which has been rising in the polls, made big gains in recent state elections, and is currently the second strongest party in Germany with 23% of the support. While every party represented in the Bundestag has so far ruled out governing with the AfD, nearly half of the German population supports the party participating in government, according to a recent opinion poll.
We recently reported about a proposal by a member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to ban the AfD outright. Marco Wanderwitz says “we are dealing with a party that seriously endangers our free democratic basic order and the state as a whole.” Two AfD state associations, in Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, have been categorised by the domestic intelligence agency as “confirmed right-wing extremist,” and the AfD as a whole is considered a suspected right-wing extremist organisation. Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) last week said it had gathered extensive information that showed AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt branch values were “incompatible with human dignity, democracy, and the rule of law.”
In a more recent development, the Bundestag passed a law last Friday that clearly disadvantages the AfD. The law stipulates that a party foundation can only receive federal funding if the party it is associated with has been represented in the Bundestag at least three times in a row. AfD first entered the Bundestag in 2017, and did so for the second time in 2021, therefore its affiliated foundation, the Desiderius-Erasmus-Stiftung is not entitled to the hundreds of millions of euros that other party-affiliated foundations are. To make matters worse for the AfD, the law states that foundations must guarantee they actively support the free democratic basic order and the idea of international understanding. If the above-mentioned labelling of the party is to be taken seriously, the mainstream parties will surely not allow the funding of the Desiderius-Erasmus-Stiftung even after the 2025 federal elections.
Erika Steinbach, chairwoman of the foundation said the Bundestag had “quite openly demonstrated an oppressive contempt for democracy that would do credit to any authoritarian country.”
AfD MP Mariana Harder-Kühnel said, “establishing an instrument to weaken the opposition could become a problem in a free, democratic constitutional state.”
Government parties seem to be happy with the Bundestag’s decision. Johannes Fechner, a Social Democrat said “the most important regulation is quite clear: no money for enemies of the constitution.” Konstantin von Notz of the Greens said “Anyone who deliberately rallies extremists behind themselves and becomes their mouthpiece must not receive state funding.”
As we previously reported, German leftist politician Sahra Wagenknecht in an interview on Monday, November 13th, denounced a proposal to ban the party, saying an unconstitutional ban of a political competitor is “incompatible with democratic aspirations.”
