The chancellor of Germany's Olaf Scholz said today that he is currently against a possible procedure to ban the far-right party "Alternative for Germany", DPA reported, quoted by BTA.
Scholz said that intelligence services should continue to monitor the party and gather material, but warned that authorities should be “very careful with the banning procedure”.
„The worst thing would be a procedure that develops over several years and then fails in the end,”, the chancellor said at a meeting with voters in Potsdam near Berlin.
Under German law, both the parliament and the government can ask the Federal Constitutional Court to ban a particular party.
Earlier this month, a group of more than 100 lawmakers from various parties in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, tabled a motion to start a ban procedure. It is not yet clear whether the proposal can muster a majority.
Recently, 17 constitutional law experts sent a letter to the Bundestag's Home Affairs and Legal Affairs Committees, expressing the opinion that a procedure to ban the “Alternative to Germany” would have a chance of success.