The AfD has achieved partial legal success in a lawsuit against the President of the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Stephan Kramer. The Weimar Administrative Court accepted a corresponding lawsuit from the Thuringian regional association AfD in one case. The judges dismissed the lawsuit on several other points.
As the court ruled, Kramer violated the principle of neutrality when, as a representative of the authorities, he “assessed the content” of the AfD’s program. The proceedings concern Kramer’s statements in a conversation with the newspaper published in Suhl Free word in June 2023. In it, Kramer said that the AfD “actually has no political alternatives and solutions to offer” and has “hardly any existing program”.
State bodies are not allowed to make judgmental statements about the programs of individual parties, the court said in support of its decision. This affects equal opportunities in political competition. The judges’ decision is not yet final.
Court judges two statements about the AfD to be admissible
According to the court, two other statements by Kramer that were criticized by the AfD are legal. This applies, for example, to the statement “You denigrate our democracy, always and constantly, not only on Mondays on our streets, but also in pretty much every statement that I have heard made by an AfD representative in a parliament.”
According to the judges, this assessment is a “permissible explanation of the findings in the 2021 and 2022 Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution reports”. These reports provide evidence that the public appearance of the AfD Thuringia is directed against the principle of democracy. The AfD had also sued at the time against passages from the 2021 Office for the Protection of the Constitution – unsuccessful.
The second statement from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which the court classified as admissible, is: “Ideally, citizens decide against the enemies of the constitution by voting in elections, so that there is no danger to the free democratic basic order.” The court did not see this as a violation because the sentence did not explicitly mention the AfD.
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Kramer supports party ban proceedings
Thuringia is one of the federal states in which the AfD regional association is from Protection of the Constitution is classified as proven right-wing extremist. With Björn Höcke The party in Thuringia is also led by the most prominent representative of the formally dissolved ethnic wing of the AfD.
In connection with the observation of the Thuringian AfD by the local Office for the Protection of the Constitution, AfD leader Alice Weidel publicly described its boss Kramer as a “sleazy Stasi spy”. Kramer has made clear comments on his dealings with the AfD several times in recent years. So he said in December 2023, he and his family would emigrate because of their Jewish originsif the AfD comes into government. In May this year Kramer called for a ban on the AfD.
