The Berlin state list of the NPD should have been admitted to the 2017 federal election.

This is what the Federal Constitutional Court decided in a decision published on Thursday.

The state electoral committee, which had refused approval, violated the NPD's freedom of party and the other plaintiffs who had moved to Karlsruhe violated their right to vote.

The decision of the Constitutional Court is only of a declaratory nature.

This does not invalidate the federal election;

nor does it have to be repeated.

The NPD in Karlsruhe failed with these two concerns for formal reasons alone.

Marlene Grunert

Editor in Politics.

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On October 8, 2016, after a party conference, the Berlin NPD held a meeting of representatives to determine their state list for the federal elections on September 24, 2017.

According to Section 28 of the Federal Elections Act, the delegates of such assemblies may be appointed no earlier than 29 months after the start of the current electoral period.

They are intended to represent the current majority will of party members.

In view of the 18th legislative period, which began on October 22, 2013, the election in March 2016 would have been permissible.

The representatives of an individual NPD district association were elected in February 2016.

However, they swore that they had not attended the October 8 meeting.

However, the state election committee did not allow the state list to be used in the federal elections.

The NPD lodged a complaint against this and raised an electoral objection, which the Bundestag rejected.

She then went before the Federal Constitutional Court.

Its second senate has now made it clear "that the non-admission of a state list represents a serious encroachment on freedom of choice and freedom of parties".

This must be taken into account when applying Section 28 of the Federal Elections Act.

The decision states: "Among several possible variants of interpretation, preference should therefore be given to the one that brings the principles of freedom of parties and freedom of choice on the one hand and the constitutional goods justifying the requirement for approval on the other hand to the best possible balance".

It is therefore not sufficient to look at the violation of the deadline alone.

According to the Constitutional Court, the concrete repercussions must also be considered.

Not "any violation" of the right to vote in the Bundestag could lead to a state list being rejected.

The fact that individual representatives were elected prematurely is not enough “if they did not take part in the representative assembly.”

In Karlsruhe, the NPD was also concerned with having the federal election declared invalid.

However, this presupposes a “mandate relevance”.

The electoral error must have been so significant that it could have affected the composition of Parliament.

The NPD did not present this possibility.

Their representatives did not claim that the party would have won its own Bundestag mandates if it were admitted - an argument that, given the previous election results, would hardly have been convincing.

In the state of Berlin they were around 1.5 percent.