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After members of the Bundestag of the AfD invited people to the German Bundestag who harassed and insulted other members of the Bundestag, a debate about a possible prohibition procedure against the party has sparked again.

The proponents of this ban are losing sight of the decisive factors that speak against such a procedure at the present time.

The hurdles to be overcome in a party prohibition procedure could hardly be higher.

An anti-constitutional attitude of the respective party is not enough for a ban, rather the party must work concretely towards the elimination or impairment of the free-democratic basic order and even have a chance of success.

The ban is the last and most serious remedy that can be taken against a political party in a defensive democracy - and was last used by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956 to ban the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

It was not until 2017 that the Federal Constitutional Court rejected a second attempt to ban the NPD because the court did not have sufficient evidence that the party could actually be successful with its efforts against the liberal-democratic basic order.

A well-fortified democracy has many instruments

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Anyone who is now calling for a ban on the AfD should pay particular attention to two considerations.

Firstly, a party ban is not the only instrument that can be used in the sense of a defensive democracy to defend oneself against parties that are suspected of opposing the free-democratic basic order and actively working against it.

This makes it urgently necessary to exhaust less restrictive instruments before considering a party ban.

This includes, for example, intensive observation of the party by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Second, the AfD has prepared extensively and intensively for possible procedures of this kind in recent years and has taken measures to preclude or at least make more difficult the success of these in advance.

These measures include the establishment of the working group for the protection of the constitution, which has drawn up specific recommendations for action for MPs and members of the AfD, as well as obtaining various reports from a renowned constitutional lawyer.

Since then, the party has noticeably taken care not to make certain statements or to publicly dissociate itself immediately from using them, and strives for internal-party disciplinary proceedings in the event of derailments that attract particular public attention.

These subsequent distancing and sanctions may be perceived by many viewers as waste - but that does not mean that they cannot have exactly the exonerating effect in court that the party seems to be speculating on.

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Against this background, it is surprising how quickly some politicians are now trying to demand a party ban.

Actually putting this demand into practice would be far more tedious and protracted - with an uncertain outcome.

"We take on the fight," announced Patrick Schnieder, member of the Bundestag of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group, recently in the context of a current hour in parliament with reference to the latest scandal in the German Bundestag towards the AfD.

The fight that he accepts is still being fought in parliament instead of in the form of a prohibition procedure before the Federal Constitutional Court.

It would be advisable to move it to the highest court only when the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution can claim with great certainty and conviction that it has gathered sufficient evidence to convince the Federal Constitutional Court to use the last resort of defensive democracy.

The author is doing her doctorate on parties and defensive democracy at the University of Oxford.

This time the NPD process does not fail because of informants

In contrast to the first attempt 13 years ago, the party ban proceedings against the NPD did not fail this time because of V-people in the party.

That said court president Andreas Vosskuhle.

Source: The World