AfD files suit against Chancellor Friedrich Merz for defamation

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has announced that it is filing a defamation complaint against Chancellor Friedrich Merz, for having described the concept of “remigration” dear to the far right as “ethnic cleansing”. The chancellor's comments are "criminally reprehensible" and "totally unacceptable", said on the night of Thursday to Friday, in a video published on the social network

Members of the Bundestag benefit from parliamentary immunity which must ensure the independence of the lower house of parliament and the exercise of their mandate without judicial or executive pressure. But the text provides an exception for defamatory insults, the only reason for which deputies - including the chancellor - can be prosecuted for comments made in the hemicycle.

The head of government spoke after an aggressive speech by Alice Weidel

On Sunday, during a regional election in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD, a pro-Russian and anti-immigration party, won nearly 44% of the vote, far ahead of the conservative party (CDU) of Merz and the outgoing minister-president, credited with 17% of the vote. The chancellor tried to regain control on Wednesday, accusing the AfD of promoting “ethnic cleansing” with “remigration”, a word used by the far right to define its policy of mass expulsion of foreigners.

“The word remigration is nothing other than a synonym for ethnic cleansing based on origin and skin color,” accused Friedrich Merz during a debate in the Bundestag, to the jeers of AfD elected officials. The head of government was speaking after an aggressive speech by Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the AfD, who regretted that Germans had to “live on a daily basis with the consequences of mass immigration”.

In Germany, the line between political criticism and criminal insult was redrawn by the courts, which convicted two ordinary citizens for insults written on social networks against Friedrich Merz or the former environmentalist vice-chancellor Robert Habeck.