GERMAN socialist daily newspaper Junge Welt has vowed to fight on after losing a court case objecting to being labelled extremist on Thursday.

In an oral hearing, the Berlin Administrative Court dismissed a lawsuit against the mention of the paper in reports of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (OPC).

This decision upholds the right of the federal government to mention and monitor JW in its annual reports on the protection of the German constitution, which has an impact on the paper’s availability in public institutions like universities and libraries, and its right to advertise.

Judge Wilfied Peters said the authorities had “correctly categorised” the paper.

He referred to a photo montage in the paper showing Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin at his desk and used this to accuse it of supporting the establishment of a “one-party dictatorship” in Germany.

Lawyers for the OPC said the paper is Marxist-Leninist and that this was unconstitutional in Germany as laid down by the banning of the German Communist Party in 1956.

The legal costs of more than €115,000 (£96,000) must be borne by the paper’s publisher 8. Mai GmbH. 

JW managing director Dietmar Koschmieder said the paper would exhaust “all legal options to protect press freedoms.”

He said that if the secret service accusation was that Junge Welt has influence in swaying public opinion, it would continue to use it.