Hendrik Wüst reiterates the call for a working group to review the AfD ban

On the question of an AfD ban, North Rhine-Westphalia's Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst has reiterated his call for a federal-state working group. Such a group is needed “that collects verifiable evidence, what kind of party is that? We have to do that first,” answered Wüst in Lehrte near Hanover to an audience question at a CDU event before the Lower Saxony local elections. There is currently no such common collection, and “different legal consequences” could result.

“(...) then I have to protect this constitution”

At the same time, Wüst emphasized that the question of a ban procedure was not a question of attitude, but that the Basic Law had rightly defined very high hurdles for a party ban. “My personal position, but setting that aside, is: If in the end it is enough to ban a party because it aggressively and combatively endangers our free-democratic basic order, then I say, I read that as a command to act,” said Wüst. “If a party is able to unhinge this constitution through its aggressive, combative stance, then I have to protect this constitution. I took an oath of office there.”

After the AfD's election victory in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, Wüst had already called for the party to be audited by a group consisting of experts from the federal and state governments as well as constitutional lawyers and officials from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz then once again expressed skepticism about the chances of success of a possible AfD ban procedure. “We are welcome to check this again and again, but from my point of view it is a very high hurdle,” said the CDU chairman on Wednesday. Incidentally, he does not believe that banning the party will solve the problem that AfD voters see in Germany, said Merz.