According to a press report, the federal police have banned 49 right-wing extremists from leaving Germany since November 2019. According to information from Thursday, this is the answer of the Federal Ministry of the Interior to a request from the left-wing member of the Bundestag Martina Renner, which is available to the editorial network Germany (RND).
In total, the federal police ordered 55 bans on leaving the country during this period – individual neo-Nazis were therefore banned from leaving the country more than once.
The most common reason given by the ministry for the ban on leaving the country is “the announced participation in right-wing extremist memorial, music or martial arts events abroad” and the “damage to the reputation of the Federal Republic of Germany” caused by this.
The Federal Ministry of the Interior was no longer able to report how many exit bans there had been until October 2019 due to data protection deletion periods.
About half of the exit bans were related to the planned participation of German neo-Nazis in right-wing extremist memorial demonstrations in Hungary and Bulgaria in 2020 and 2022. According to the RND, this emerges from the federal government’s response to another parliamentary question from the left.
Since the start of the Russian war of aggression this February, isolated German right-wing extremists have also been prevented from leaving the country for Ukraine by the federal police.
The Ukraine war has recently made it clear that the authorities have major problems preventing German right-wing extremists from leaving the country, said the domestic policy spokeswoman for the left-wing faction in the Bundestag, Martina Renner, the RND. It is necessary for the security authorities to focus better on the travel movements of right-wing extremists overall.
