113 German MPs call for ban on major opposition party

An initiative group in the Bundestag claims that the Alternative for Germany is a “Nazi party”

A large cross-faction initiative group in the German Bundestag has submitted a motion calling for a ban on the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a major opposition party with more than 80 seats in the national parliament.

The initiators of the motion claim that the right-wing group is at odds with what they call the “central basic principles” of the democratic order and poses a danger to the state, according to local media.

Established in 2013 as an Euroskeptic party, the AfD became known for its anti-immigration rhetoric amid the refugee crisis of 2015. Current and former members have also been involved in various controversies over statements related to Germany’s Nazi past.

Following the start of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, the party criticized Berlin’s aid to Ukraine and called for the restoration of economic ties with Russia, which were effectively severed as a result of Berlin’s sanctions on Moscow.

AfD co-chair Tino Chrupalla rejected the continued costly support for Ukraine provided by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government, and urged the return of Russian natural gas to support the struggling German economy.

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Other major German parties have mostly shunned the AfD, accusing it of having ties to right-wing extremists and refusing to enter into political coalitions with its members. The party has nevertheless enjoyed growing support from the public over the years, which has been particularly strong in eastern German states.

In September, the AfD won regional parliamentary elections in the state of Thuringia and came in second in two other eastern states – Brandenburg and Saxony.

“We must subject this powerful right-wing extremist party to the review by the Federal Constitutional Court,” the initiative group’s leader, Marco Wanderwitz, told TAZ newspaper on Wednesday. “This is about nothing less than our free democracy,” the MP, who represents the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said.

The motion was mostly supported by the Greens, which accounted for around half of the 113-strong group, 31 of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party MPs, and 18 out of 28 Left Party lawmakers. Only six other CDU members joined Wanderwitz in the initiative, however.

The motion submitted by the MPs accuses the AfD of questioning the human dignity of migrants and the LGBTQ+ community, and trivializing Nazi crimes as well as serving as an “extended arm of authoritarian foreign regimes.”

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One Left Party MP, Martina Renner, who is among the initiators of the motion, openly called the AfD a “Nazi Party,” adding that “more and more colleagues see it as their responsibility to protect democracy” from the danger supposedly posed by the AfD.

The party has not yet commented on the developments. The German domestic security service (BfV) was expected to present a report on the AfD, in which it could potentially change the party’s status to “proven right-wing extremist” organization. The report, however, was postponed due to potential early parliamentary elections that could be held in February.

The BfV already declared it a “suspected” extremist group in 2021. Its regional branches were also designated “right-wing extremist” groups by the authorities in three German states, including Saxony.

The motion submitted on Wednesday would need a simple majority in the 733-member parliament for the Constitutional Court to launch a case against the AfD – the first step towards a potential ban.

According to German media, the future of the initiative is unclear as most CDU MPs, including the party’s leader, Friedrich Merz, as well as the Free Democrats and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), oppose it. The CDU has the biggest opposition faction in the parliament, with over 150 MPs. The Free Democrats hold 90 seats and the BSW has ten.