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Villa on Lehnitzsee in Postdam: Right-wing extremists met here in November 2023
Photo: Jürgen Ritter / IMAGO
When authorities want to gain insight into the finances of right-wing extremist and other anti-constitutional networks, they often encounter legal hurdles. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wants things to change. In order to give civil servants more powers, the Constitutional Protection Act should be changed, according to Faeser's ministry.
This would give the Office for the Protection of the Constitution more opportunities, for example, to monitor money flows in the area of the so-called New Right - and also to investigate their connections to the AfD and its youth organization Junge Alternative (JA). The New Right includes groups such as the “Identitarian Movement” (IB), the “Institute for State Policy” founded by right-wing thinker Götz Kubitschek, the “One Percent” association and the “Compact” magazine. But the planned change in the law would also make it easier for the authorities to examine accounts in the area of so-called legalistic Islamism and left-wing extremist groups.
In the future, the “threat potential” will be decisive
So far, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been able to investigate the finances of militant neo-Nazi groups and jihadists. However, this is difficult for extremists who are not focused on violence. That's why in the future the "potential threat" of anti-constitutional actors for democracy and their social influence will be important, according to the Interior Ministry.
In addition, the procedures should become less bureaucratic. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution should no longer have to obtain approval from the responsible Bundestag commission for every single piece of information about which bank a suspect has his account at.
Donors should be exposed
The aim of expanding financial investigations is also "so that no one who donates to right-wing extremist organizations or supports them financially in any other way can rely on remaining undetected," said the Interior Ministry. It is not yet known whether the traffic light partners FDP and Grüne support Faeser's plans.
With her announcement, Faeser is also reacting to a meeting of right-wing extremists, AfD officials and entrepreneurs in November in a Potsdam villa. There, the Austrian right-wing extremist Martin Sellner, pioneer of the “identitarian movement” in German-speaking countries, presented plans for “remigration” – the mass deportation or displacement of immigrants and Germans with a migration history.
According to Correctiv, a minimum donation of 5,000 euros was required to take part in the networking meeting. Since the events became known in January, hundreds of thousands of people across the country have taken to the streets to protest against right-wing extremism.
The security authorities have long complained about what they consider to be too high hurdles for financial investigations against right-wing extremists. In a confidential report for the conference of federal and state interior ministers, which SPIEGEL reported on in spring 2022, experts complained about the administrative effort required to initiate such investigations. This is too high and “takes up unnecessary time.” There is also a lack of trained staff for the complex subject matter in many constitutional protection offices.
There would also be high legal hurdles. In many cases, officers can only examine money flows if there is a “reference to violence.” In the case of right-wing extremists who went about their business "quietly" below this threshold and thus undermined democracy, "deeper financial information could only rarely be obtained with current means," the report said.