The BfV’s lawyer noted that the request for an interruption was not justified. The party has so far not presented “the slightest indication” in the proceedings that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution could have violated legal standards. The plaintiff is aiming “completely in the dark”.
The AfD’s lawyers had previously continued their questioning on Tuesday with further detailed questions to the BfV. Among other things, the AfD tried to gain insight into the working methods and internal structures of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution – for example, whether the Office for the Protection of the Constitution might have accidentally acquired knowledge of the AfD’s litigation tactics and would now be taken into account. The BfV denied this.
Since Tuesday, the court has been negotiating, among other things, whether the AfD as a whole party can be listed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected right-wing extremist case. In March 2022, the Cologne Administrative Court dismissed a lawsuit filed against it by the AfD in the first instance.
The hearing, which was initially scheduled to last two days, was interrupted late on Tuesday after around ten hours. It was initially unclear whether a verdict would be announced on Wednesday. In the evening, the AfD’s lawyers announced that they might submit more than 200 applications for evidence. In this case, an end to the hearing on Wednesday would be unlikely.
The Senate was already busy with numerous proposals from the AfD on Tuesday. Their lawyers called, among other things, for the hearing to be postponed and for reports from the state constitutional authorities in Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony to be obtained from the AfD state associations there. The AfD also requested that several employees of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution be summoned as witnesses. In connection with the way in which the applications for evidence were presented, the BfV’s lawyer spoke of “delaying the process”, which the AfD rejected.
The subject of the oral hearing are three appeals against the Federal Republic of Germany, represented by the BfV. In this way, the AfD is defending itself against, among other things, the classification of the entire party as a suspected extremist case and the public announcement of this.
The AfD argues, among other things, that the Federal Constitutional Protection Act does not apply to political parties. The declaration of unconstitutionality remains reserved for the Federal Constitutional Court, but not for an authority. She also complains about the considerable disadvantages caused by declaring anti-constitutionality in her party political work. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution responds that it is the official task to check whether a party is definitely extremist or a suspected case.
The three appeals also concern the classification of the AfD youth organization Junge Alternative (JA) and the now officially dissolved so-called wing as suspected cases – in the case of the wing also about the classification as a confirmed extremist effort.
