A court decision to cut state funding to a minor far-right political party in Germany has sparked calls for similar rules to be applied to the much more significant rightwing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which is at the centre of a storm over immigration policy.
The constitutional court ruled in favour of stopping public funding to the party Die Heimat (the homeland), successor to the National Democratic party (NPD), from 2023.
The Karlsruhe institution said its decision was justified because the NPD and Die Heimat were explicitly out to undermine or even overthrow German democracy.
It is the first ruling of its kind, coinciding with a debate over whether the AfD, founded in 2013, could be legally banned, and over whether to remove the basic rights of its more radical members.
The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who has spoken of his scepticism over the efficacy of banning the AfD, welcomed the ruling, calling it a “confirmation of the pathway to not offering much space to the enemies of freedom”.
Markus Söder, the conservative leader of the southern state of Bavaria, said before the ruling that withdrawing funds from Die Heimat could be a “blueprint” for managing the threat from the AfD.
According to Tuesday’s ruling, the NPD/Die Heimat would no longer receive state funding and tax relief would no longer be available to it or its donors, the court said.
An application was made to the court in 2019 by the lower house of parliament (Bundestag) and the upper house (Bundesrat), calling for the party to be deprived of funding, after a change was made in Germany’s basic law to stop radical parties from receiving the state funds to which other parties are entitled.
In its ruling, the court said Die Heimat “aims to replace the existing constitutional system with an authoritarian state based on an ethnic “people’s community”. It said the party’s policies contravened and were disrespectful of the human dignity of minorities and migrants.
It added that Die Heimat had sought to “eliminate the free democratic order” and had a “racist, in particular anti-Muslim, antisemitic and anti-Gypsy, attitude” that was in contravention of Germany’s constitutional principles.
In 2017, an attempt to outlaw the NPD was stopped by the court which argued that although the party resembled Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, it was too weak and therefore not a threat to democracy.
A previous attempt to ban the party at the start of the 2000s failed after it was discovered the intelligence agency had planted its own moles in the party leadership, making the bid unlawful.
The ruling is being pored over in detail since some AfD members were recently revealed to have attended a meeting discussing a masterplan to expel those of foreign origin including those in possession of a German passport.
Politicians are under pressure to examine the feasibility of banning the AfD, even as political and legal figureheads warn of the possibility of such a move backfiring.
Over the past week hundreds of thousands of Germans have taken to the streets to campaign against the rise of the party.
The AfD has responded by saying the policies discussed at the meeting are not party policy, and accusing the government of manipulating the protests in order to divert attention from its own poor record of dealing with migration and other pressing matters.
The AfD is polling second nationwide and, ahead of three state elections in eastern Germany this autumn, is leading in each one. It has been classified as rightwing extremist in each of those states by state intelligence agencies, on the grounds that it undermines democracy and deploys anti-immigrant rhetoric.
A firewall policy by mainstream parties preventing them from going into coalition with the AfD has so far ensured it is kept out of power. As it rises in the polls, the question is for how long this firewall can be maintained.
On Thursday, a fresh poll showed that support for the AfD was down by about two percentage points to 20%, in what some observers said was the first sign that the immigration meeting exposé may have damaged its poll ratings.
Reacting to Karlsruhe’s ruling, the interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said it sent an unambiguous signal to anti-democratic powers in Germany.
“The decision comes at a time when rightwing extremism is the greatest extremist threat to our democracy,” she said in a statement. “We are taking decisive action against all those who are preparing the ground for rightwing extremist violence.”
She added: “The forces that want to dismantle and destroy our democracy must not receive a cent of government funding.”
She said that withdrawing public funding was “yet another instrument” helpful in the efforts to defend democracy.
For Die Heimat, the court’s decision is of little real consequence, owing to its failure to achieve enough support in European, federal and state elections to make it eligible for funding.
In recent years its influence has been confined to the municipal level, with representation in local councils across the country. However, its support has largely switched to the AfD.
At the last federal election in 2021 Die Heimat/NPD got 65,000 votes or 0.1% of the vote. At the last European election it got 100,000 votes, or 0.3% of the votes.
Public money is accessible by any party in Germany scoring a minimum of 0.5% in national or European elections, or 1% in regional polls.
The tax relief clause will be the biggest blow to Heimat and its supporters, however, which is believed to have amounted to about €200,000 since 2020.
Frank Franz, the head of Die Heimat, called the court ruling a scandal, saying the party would “cling to life” as the far right was currently doing “in every nook and cranny”.
