Politicians in have warned against banning the far-right (AfD) party after its classification as a .
The neo-liberal FDP’s chair candidate Christian Dürr warned that banning the second-strongest party in the federal election “would be fatal.”
Dürr told the Funke Media Group of newspapers that the AfD must be “politically diminished again” by other parties solving concrete problems.
The parliamentary spokesman for the center-right CDU/CSU in parliament, Alexander Throm, agreed.
“The decisive factor in the fight against the AfD now is rapid, visible successes by the new coalition, especially in the areas of migration, security, and the economy,” Throm told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper.
Meanwhile, the state of Berlin’s justice senator Felor Badenberg told public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk that the ban debate is premature.
Badenberg said she expects the AfD to take legal action against the classification, which could take years.
On Friday, Germany’s (BfV) classified the AfD as a right-wing extremist group after reviewing the party’s activities for several years.
The BfV cited the “xenophobic, anti-minority, Islamophobic and anti-Muslim statements made by leading party officials.”
The AfD says it is being “publicly discredited and criminalized” and has threatened legal action.
The party received more than 10 million votes in the February election and is currently polling neck and neck with the conservative alliance.
The change of classification means the government or parliament could call on the to ban the party, but this would need to clear several hurdles first.
Two attempts to ban another far-right party, NDP — which renamed itself “Die Heimat” (The Homeland) in 2023 — have already failed.
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