Germany faces constitutional battle over move to ban 'racist' far-right par

Germany was preparing on Wednesday to take a major step towards banning a far-right political party which has been called anti-Semitic and racist, a move expected to provoke a bitter constitutional battle.

The interior ministers of the country's 16 states were expected to recommend outlawing the National Democratic Party (NPD), on the grounds that it promotes a racist, xenophobic agenda in violation of the constitution established after the World War-II.

Banning political parties is an especially sensitive matter in a country haunted by memories of the Nazi regime's silencing of dissent, but Germany's past has heightened sensitivities about a lingering extremist minority.

The move to ban the NPD follows claims last year that a senior party official aided a cell of neo-Nazis calling itself the National Socialist Underground that waged a racist killing spree over nearly a decade. The opposition Social Democrats have pushed for the ban despite reservations from some conservatives, including the chancellor, Angela Merkel.

She wants to be sure that any case is legally sound after an attempt to ban the NPD in 2003 collapsed because government informants were used as witnesses. Supporters of the ban said most materials for the legal case would be drawn from the public record. If approved, the motion needs to be passed by state governors and the upper house of parliament. It would then head to the constitutional court, where the NPD has pledged to oppose it vigorously.

Merkel said she was worried the NPD could be strengthened if a second attempt failed. Others said a ban could push the NPD underground and make it more dangerous. Otto Fricke, of the Free Democratic Party, a coalition partner of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, told The Daily Telegraph: "My party's view is that it will not work. If you force them underground they are going to fight in a different way, you have to fight them on a proper political playing field. We say fight extremists with strong arguments, fight them by showing how stupid they are, but don't fight them by forbidding them and pushing them underground."

More radical than populist anti-immigrant parties in France, Britain and the Netherlands, the NPD has seats in two state assemblies in eastern Germany and receives about euros 1?million (pounds 812,000) each year in taxpayers' funding.

Opponents of a ban note that its membership has fallen to 6,300 in 2011 and remains marginalised at a national level. In the last federal elections in 2009, it won 1.5% of the vote, well below the 5% needed to sit in parliament. Holger Apfel, the NPD's leader, said he hoped that the government chose to pursue a ban so his party could challenge it.