In the aftermath of the AfD’s party convention in Riesa, leading initiators are once again advocating for a constitutional court review of a ban on the party. “The AfD is radicalizing further in plain sight” said the parliamentary business manager of the Greens, Till Steffen, to the news portal T-Online on Tuesday. “After this party convention, no one can say that the AfD’s plans for remigration are just a left-green fantasy.”
Steffen explained that it is time to take to the streets again. “And it is more urgent than ever to push forward the review procedure before the election. The Bundestag will have to deal with this at the end of January.”
Martina Renner (The Left) also sees a new quality in the AfD’s appearance in Riesa. “The openly nationalist speech by Alice Weidel and her unanimous election prove: the AfD has neither a moderate nor a bourgeois wing, it is entirely an extremist party” Renner said to the news portal. “It is openly positioning itself in a historical line with National Socialism.”
Renner believes that one does not need to wait for the verdict of the constitutional protection office to recognize this. “The Bundestag must seize the last chance to initiate a review of the AfD at the Federal Constitutional Court – there is no time to lose.”
The group’s motion had previously had too few supporters in the Bundestag to have a chance of success. When it was submitted in November, it had only 113 initial signatories. A simple majority of the 733 members of the Bundestag would have to speak out in favor of a review procedure to start it.
The group of supporters of the review procedure will meet again this week to discuss their further course of action. Their goal is to have the motion discussed in the Bundestag in the penultimate session at the end of January. However, the group has not yet requested to have the motion placed on the agenda.