Hubig wants to use leaked emails to examine AfD ban procedures

After the AfD's recent successes in the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Federal Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig is in favor of having a possible ban on the party examined by a working group with representatives from the federal and state governments. From the SPD politician's point of view, the emails that were recently leaked on the Internet should also be used for this purpose.

“I am convinced that we must now seriously and systematically examine whether the conditions for a ban are met,” emphasized Hubig in an interview with the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. The emails published online by strangers should be used “if they provide evidence of the AfD’s unconstitutionality.”

Around two weeks ago, unknown hackers published the leak containing 281 gigabytes of data. Since then, around 420,000 emails and almost 50,000 documents have been available for download on the Internet. The AfD has confirmed parts of the leak.

Hubig: AfD state government would be a “stress test for the rule of law”

The Justice Minister referred to the political situation in Saxony-Anhalt, where, after the AfD's clear election victory in September, an AfD politician, Tobias Rausch, was elected president of the state parliament for the first time in Germany around a month ago. A new Prime Minister is to be elected in mid-December, with the AfD's top candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, running.

“The election of an AfD representative as state parliament president was already a turning point,” said Hubig. An AfD government in Saxony-Anhalt would, "according to everything that can be measured, be a tough test for the constitutional state."

But Hubig also emphasized that the federal government can only decide by consensus on the question of whether to initiate ban proceedings against the AfD. So far there does not seem to be a uniform position in the black-red coalition.