Germany’s highest court has dismissed an application to ban the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) saying that, despite its best efforts, the NPD was too weak and disorganised to pose a risk to the constitutional order.
In a far-reaching verdict, the constitutional court in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, said a request by Germany’s federal states to outlaw the party was understandable given the NPD’s wish to “replace the existing constitutional order with . . . an authoritarian nation state”.
But stagnating political support and dwindling membership meant its strength fell well short of its ambition, the judges ruled. With no chance of winning either a political majority or joining any ruling coalitions, it was not a political force to be reckoned with.
In their ruling against a ban, the Karlsruhe court cited the high burden of proof for such a drastic step in modern Germany, itself a response to Hitler’s banning of political rivals during the Third Reich. The judges reminded in their ruling that “overstepping an ethos or world view” alone was not sufficient grounds for a ban.
“Its political programme disregards human dignity and is incompatible with democratic principles,” said Dr Andreas Vosskuhle, president of the constitutional court, in the ruling. “At present however there is a lack of concrete grounds that suggest [its] activities will lead to success.”
The judgment delivered a slap to both sides. Despite NPD claims to the contrary, the court said it saw clear links between its programme and Nazi ideology.
To Germany’s federal states, meanwhile, the judges also issued a stern warning: don’t attempt a third time to outlaw a party with just one sitting parliamentarian – not even in the Bundestag or a state legislature, but in the European Parliament.
Doomed to failure
German chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in Berlin, fearing the application was doomed to failure, chose not to participate.
It is the second failed attempt to ban the NPD. A 2003 attempt was halted by the court after it emerged the party was packed with state informants, whom judges suggested could be acting as agents provocateur.
The NPD was founded in 1964 and vows to fight for “the survival and continued existence of the German people in its ancestral central European living space”. Never a force at federal level, and only sporadically at regional level, it scores about 1 per cent in national polls and has an estimated 5,200 members.
The second attempt to ban the NPD arose after the emergence in 2013 of a three-person neo-Nazi cell, the National Socialist Underground, was exposed as being behind a decade-long series of killings of immigrants.
Since then, however, the NPD has lost its remaining state parliament seats and seen many of its supporters drift away to the populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) which has morphed from a bailout-critical movement to an anti-immigrant party, with seats in half of Germany’s 16 state parliaments and up to 15 per cent in federal opinion polls.
Critics of the NPD ban application suggest the AfD, with its populist politics and anti-Muslim and xenophobic provocations, poses a far greater challenge for Germany’s democratic order.
