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Rhineland-Palatinate excludes AfD members from civil service!
Rhineland-Palatinate excludes AfD members from public service. Loyalty to the constitution becomes an obligation for applicants.
Rhineland-Palatinate excludes AfD members from civil service!
Rhineland-Palatinate is taking measures to strengthen the constitutional loyalty of applicants in the public service. Interior Minister Michael Ebling (SPD) announced that AfD members will no longer have access to civil service in the future. In order to comply with the new regulations, all applicants will in future have to submit a written declaration that they have not belonged to any extremist organization in the last five years. According to Die Presse, a regularly updated list from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, on which the AfD is listed, is used for this purpose.
“The radicalization within the AfD is increasing,” Ebling stated, emphasizing that there is no longer a moderate wing. Applicants who cannot dispel doubts about their adherence to the constitution or who refuse to provide the required declaration are not entitled to employment. This measure applies not only to new applicants, but also to employees already working in the public sector. Membership in a listed organization can constitute a disciplinary offense, which in the worst case can lead to removal from service.
Revised regulations for civil servants
The administrative regulation on the constitutionality of civil servants and collective bargaining employees has been revised and tightened. This means that the new regulations affect both police officers and teachers. According to the Tagesschau, applicants must confirm their loyalty to the constitution in writing in a self-disclosure.
Ebling recalled that loyalty to the constitution is a duty for every civil servant and that extremism is not compatible with the status of a civil servant. For police officers in particular, there are stricter hiring requirements, including a comprehensive background check. These measures are applied not only in Rhineland-Palatinate, but also in other federal states such as Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, where similar regulations are in force.
Criticism from the AfD
The issue is further complicated by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution's classification of the AfD as right-wing extremist, which is currently on hold due to a lawsuit by the AfD. Despite these legal disputes, the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of the Interior was already working on tightening the regulations before the classification.