A long-running criminal case against Gunnar Beck, a former Member of the European Parliament for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, has imploded before a Neuss North Rhine-Westphalia district court.
After over three years of investigation, the Düsseldorf Public Prosecutor’s Office abruptly dropped the main allegations of robbery and theft against Beck days before the case’s final hearing and expected judgment.
It turns out there was no evidence to support the charges.
The only remaining charge concerned an alleged verbal “resistance” to state authority, resulting in a fine from the court.
Beck, an academic lawyer who served as an MEP until 2024, had been under investigation since 2022.
He was initially suspected of robbery, a theft of a scarf from a Neuss department store, and violent assaults on store employees and police officers. A conviction for robbery would have carried a possible prison sentence up to fifteen years.
Beck has repeatedly denied the allegations, characterising them as “grotesque and fabricated”.
Although the investigation was discontinued in 2022, it was reopened in 2023 by a different public prosecutor. From that point on, the allegations’ scope changed.
What began as an accusation of robbery was reduced to an alleged theft of drugstore items worth around €350. By 2024, the charges were downgraded further to petty theft, involving only cosmetic test samples valued between €1 and €20.
At a hearing in late September, witnesses described Beck as having been “very aggressive”, yet were unable to recall the events with any clarity. They could not identify specific stolen items, describe injuries allegedly caused by Beck, or state who among them had been assaulted.
Crucially, the prosecution conceded it had never identified a single object that could reliably be said to have been stolen by Beck. The court established none of the items seized from him had ever been sold at the Galeria Kaufhof branch in Neuss. In fact, none of the items in his possession has ever been sold by any branch of the store chain anywhere, in Germany or abroad.
The scarf initially presented as stolen turned out to have been lawfully purchased in Great Britain by Beck decades earlier.
In light of these findings, the court dismissed the allegations of theft, assault and bodily harm. By an order dated November 21, the proceedings were formally discontinued.
The only remaining issue was a minor penalty order for alleged “verbal resistance” towards police officers, a charge Beck also rejects. He has argued any sharp words would have been understandable, given he was confronted by four much younger and physically larger officers.
At the same time, Beck told Brussels Signal the language he used, though firm, was not abusive.
Beck maintains the case was built on misrepresentations and fabricated evidence. He said in the criminal complaint, prosecutors falsely presented photographs of goods taken directly from store shelves as items seized from his luggage, describing them as stolen.
He characterised the prosecution as politically motivated, and pointed to the involvement of a senior Düsseldorf prosecutor who had previously pursued him over alleged misuse of an academic title in an apparent malicious reading of a translation. This was ultimately settled with a non-punitive warning.
Brussels Signal reached out to the Düsseldorf Public Prosecutor’s Office, but did not receive a reply.
The revival of the case shortly before the 2024 European elections, following lifting of Beck’s parliamentary immunity, has been described by AfD representatives as part of a broader pattern of “lawfare”: The instrumental use of legal proceedings against political opponents.
During the election campaign, several AfD politicians faced renewed investigations, alongside allegations of state-backed surveillance within the party.
Despite this sustained legal and media pressure, the AfD secured just under 16 per cent of the vote in the 2024 European elections and nearly 21 per cent in the subsequent federal election. Current opinion polls place the party’s support at around 26 per cent.
The plenary of the European Parliament has confirmed the immunity of the Italian self-declared ‘anti-fascist’ Ilaria Salis. https://t.co/I8uwl6G5OS
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) October 8, 2025
