Hundreds of thousands of emails attributed to the AfD that have appeared online could, from the perspective of Federal Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig, help clear the way for a potential ban procedure against the party. The SPD politician spoke to the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung in favor of a federal-state working group tasked with assessing the odds of a ban. She said she would be allowed to draw on all available evidence in the process. “Even the emails could likely be used if they provide evidence of the AfD’s hostility to the constitutional order,” Hubig said.
Unknown individuals recently released data online that they claimed consisted of around 421,000 AfD emails. The anti-queer AfD is being monitored nationwide by Germany’s domestic intelligence service as a case of suspicion. Some state associations are classified by their respective state constitutional protection offices as firmly right-wing extremist.
“I am convinced that we must now seriously and systematically examine whether the prerequisites for a ban procedure are in place,” Hubig stated. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD) has also recently urged the formation of a federal-state working group to examine the possibility of an AfD ban.
Such a group would, according to previous statements, pool knowledge from the federal and state levels and cooperate with the domestic intelligence service and constitutional-law experts. Only afterward would a decision be made on whether the Bundesrat, Bundestag, or the federal government would actually file an AfD ban. Hubig said, “For me, it is clear: if an application has concrete prospects for success, then it must be filed.”
