A year and a half ago, the AfD helped a prime minister into office for the first time, and the Chancellor called the process on a trip to South Africa “unforgivable”.
Was she allowed to say something like that?
Karlsruhe - In February 2020, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) called the election of a Prime Minister with AfD votes in Thuringia "unforgivable" - now the Federal Constitutional Court is deciding whether she has crossed a red line.
Chancellor Helge Braun (CDU) justified in the Karlsruhe hearing on Wednesday that Merkel had spoken at a state reception in South Africa.
The journalists traveling with them and above all the coalition partners wanted a positioning.
It was also about the international reputation of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The complaining AfD, on the other hand, assessed the statements as a direct attack.
"We believe that such an attack, especially during an official state visit under the Chancellor's logo, is unconstitutional and that Ms. Merkel has violated her duty of neutrality," said Vice-Chairman Stephan Brandner before the start of the negotiations.
Party leader Jörg Meuthen said: "She tried to delegitimize a state election in the exercise of her office as Federal Chancellor."
In Karlsruhe, the party wants to establish that its right to equal opportunities in political competition has been violated.
Experience shows that the verdict will be announced in a few months.
Actually, on February 5, 2020, Bodo Ramelow (left) wanted to be re-elected as head of government in the state parliament in Erfurt.
He did not get enough votes in the first two ballots.
In the third ballot, the FDP politician Thomas Kemmerich, completely surprisingly, beat him for one vote - co-elected by the CDU and AfD.
It was the first time that the AfD helped a prime minister into office.
Three days later, Kemmerich resigned under pressure, and he continued to conduct official business without a government until March.
Merkel, who was currently traveling, had spoken the day after the election and had preceded her press conference with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with a “preliminary remark” “for domestic political reasons”.
The result must be "reversed", she said, at least the CDU should not participate in this government.
And: "It was a bad day for democracy." A transcript of the press conference was meanwhile on bundeskanzlerin.de and bundesregierung.de.
Braun said that press conferences are basically literally and completely documented, and that nothing will be deleted.
Journalists would rely on that.
The AfD has already successfully sued Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) in Karlsruhe because an interview with AfD-critical passages was on his ministry page. And Johanna Wanka (CDU) was reprimanded during her time as education minister for calling for the “red card” for the AfD in a ministry communication. According to these judgments, politicians may publicly criticize the AfD. However, they must respect the principle of state neutrality when expressing themselves in their role as a member of the government.
This time, too, the constitutional judges asked a number of critical questions: Isn't it a good custom that domestic politics are generally not discussed abroad?
Why did Merkel not make it clearer that she was expressing herself as a party politician?
And couldn't she have done that after the press conference?
So her words were placed very prominently.
The deputy government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer defended the approach: When traveling abroad, the guest has little scope for program changes.
In such a case, a “preliminary remark” is customary in order to give more weight to the actual topic.
At the start of the hearing on Wednesday, the judges of the Second Senate had rejected a rejection request from the AfD that had been submitted almost two weeks ago.
The AfD had justified this with a visit by a delegation from the court to the Federal Chancellery with a joint dinner on June 30th.
Vice President Doris Koenig said that if these regular meetings cast doubt on impartiality, an exchange of the highest constitutional organs would be impossible.
"In addition, it would express a mistrust of the members of the Federal Constitutional Court, which contradicts the constitutional and simple law presupposed image of the constitutional judge," said the court in parallel.
dpa