The AfD leaders of Thuringia and Saxony, Björn Höcke and Jörg Urban, have intervened in the legal dispute with the Office for the Protection of the Constitution over the classification and observation of their party with an expert opinion. Specifically, the report refers to the way the Office for the Protection of the Constitution deals with AfD MPs in Thuringia and Saxony. However, Höcke also sees it as a contribution to the party as a whole in the ongoing legal dispute with the domestic intelligence service.
The paper by constitutional law expert Michael Elicker concludes that "all measures that interfere with the exercise of a mandate, including those of the domestic intelligence service, are prohibited". The argument is based on the so-called indemnity for members of parliament in the state constitutions of Thuringia and Saxony.
They state: MPs may at no time be prosecuted or otherwise held accountable outside the state parliament for votes or statements made in the exercise of their mandate. This does not apply to defamatory insults. According to the AfD report, the regulation, in conjunction with earlier rulings by the Federal Constitutional Court, also rules out observation by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
