Germany taking steps to ban far-right party

BERLIN - Germany is taking steps to ban the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) as interior ministers of 16 states are expected to give their recommendation on a motion at a regularly scheduled conference on Wednesday.

The NPD has an "anti-Semitic, racist and xenophobic position" and was related to Hitler's Nazis, according to a government-commissioned report.

The party, which has about 6,300 members in 2011, has seats in parliaments of two states in eastern Germany: Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony. It receives around 1 million euros ($1.3 million) every year in taxpayers' funding, local media reported.

The interior ministers' recommendation is expected to be approved by premiers from all 16 states on Thursday in Berlin, starting legal proceedings that will lead to a vote in the upper house of parliament on Dec 14.

The decision on the possible ban has to be made by Germany's Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. It will be the second bid to ban the party since the first attempt to outlaw the NPD in 2003 failed as the judge questioned the legitimacy of the evidence because informants were used as witnesses.

Demands for a ban on the party intensified after it was found out last year that a neo-Nazi terror group was involved in the murders of nine immigrants and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007, triggering calls for a crackdown on right-wing extremism.