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Wednesday, Dec 5, 2012 9:00 AM UTC

Germany close to ban on far-right party

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Topics: From the Wires,

BERLIN (AP) — German security officials are moving toward a new attempt to ban the country’s only significant far-right party, after meticulously collecting new evidence in an effort to avoid a repeat of the debacle when they tried to ban it in 2003.

The interior ministers of Germany’s 16 states are expected to recommend Wednesday evening pursuing a new ban of the National Democratic Party on allegations it promotes a racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic agenda in violation of the country’s constitution.

Under the previous government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the country’s Federal Constitutional Court rejected an attempt to ban the party after it turned out paid government informants within the NPD, as it known by its German initials, were partially responsible for the evidence against the party.

The failed attempt seriously embarrassed the government and produced a spike in support for the NPD, which it rode to parliaments in two states in 2004 and 2005. That gave them access to state funding — about €1.2 million ($1.6 million) a year — which they used to bolster election advertising.

Still, opponents of a ban note that membership in the NPD has been dropping, with 6,300 people in the party in 2011 compared to 6,600 in 2010. And despite their occasional successes in economically-depressed eastern German states, the NPD is marginalized at a national level — winning only 1.5 percent of the vote in the most recent federal elections in 2009; well below the 5 percent needed to sit in Parliament.

In order to avoid the problems of informants, officials say almost all of the information collected in the current investigation is of public record, including details from the NPD’s own literature, Internet postings, and documented criminal activities like the conviction in 2009 of an NPD politician for defacing a Holocaust memorial.

A federal judge asked for a legal assessment of the case for a ban by the state of Lower Saxony reported back to authorities last week “an overall review shows the goals of the NPD to be incompatible with the liberal democratic order of the constitution,” Der Spiegel magazine reported.

He concluded a ban attempt would have a better than 50 percent chance of success with the Federal Constitutional Court.

NPD leader Holger Apfel told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Saturday that he hoped the government would decide to pursue a ban so the party can challenge it.

“We would welcome it if the application for a ban would finally be made,” Apfel said. “There’s nothing worse than living perpetually under the Sword of Damocles of a ban.”

After the interior ministers make their recommendation, state governors are meeting in Berlin on Thursday and expected to follow suit. That paves the way for the Upper House of Parliament, where the states are represented, to vote for a ban when it meets on Dec. 14, after which it is likely that the federal government will join the process as well, even though it is not necessary.

Officials say a first court hearing not likely before next spring and a decision from the court unlikely before next September’s federal elections.

Apfel said even if the German high court decides on a ban, the NPD would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

More By David Rising.

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