After AfD gains in Saxony-Anhalt, Veit says it is time to get more concrete

Carola Veit, president of Hamburg’s state parliament, says the debate over possible constitutional action against the AfD must move from discussion to concrete steps after the party’s strong result in Saxony-Anhalt.

“If you ask me personally, I also think that now is the time to get more concrete,” Veit said. She expressed openness to a federal-state working group examining the AfD’s constitutionality. Hendrik Wüst, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, and Hamburg’s second mayor, Katharina Fegebank, had already called for such a move.

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If you ask me personally, I also think that now is the time to get more concrete.

Veit said legal experts had previously tended to advise against the step. But if there was now a nationwide demand for an examination, she said, authorities had to address it. “Then you have to face the issue, and postponing it no longer helps,” she said. She added that she could not seriously imagine arguments against creating such a working group.

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Then you have to face the issue, and postponing it no longer helps.

At the same time, Veit pointed to the pending ruling by the Cologne Administrative Court on the AfD’s challenge to its classification as a confirmed extremist organisation. The party is currently monitored nationwide by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected extremist case. Veit rejected the argument that an AfD result above 40 percent would make a ban impossible. “That is not how I see it,” she said, arguing that the party would have to be banned if the legal conditions were met.

CDU opposition leader Dennis Thering opposed a federal-state body staffed by political parties. “A federal-state body composed of political parties is not the appropriate instrument for this,” he told dpa. He said only authorities and courts should decide on possible proceedings, based on reliable facts. Thering said the more pressing question was why the AfD enjoys such strong support despite extremist state associations and numerous suspected cases. Mainstream parties, he said, must take people’s concerns and fears seriously and offer the right answers. SPD, Greens and Left lawmakers had already agreed in January to support a working group if the Cologne court confirms the classification of the federal AfD as extremist.

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A federal-state body composed of political parties is not the appropriate instrument for this.