German
spy agency labels AfD as ‘confirmed rightwing extremist’ force
Upgrade from
‘suspected’ threat will mean greater surveillance of party that came second in
last election
Deborah Cole
in Berlin
Fri 2 May
2025 11.53 BST
Germany’s
domestic intelligence service has designated the far-right Alternative für
Deutschland (AfD), the biggest opposition party, as a “confirmed rightwing
extremist” force, meaning authorities can step up their surveillance as critics
call for it to be legally banned.
The Federal
Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) previously considered the
anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin party a “suspected” threat to Germany’s democratic
order, with three of its regional chapters in eastern statesand its youth wing
classed as confirmed extremist.
The AfD,
which came second in the February general election with just over 20% of the
vote, said it would challenge the BfV’s decision in court.
The BfV said
it had concluded that racist and anti-Muslim stances advanced by the AfD, based
on an “ethnic-ancestry-based understanding” of German identity, were
“incompatible with the free democratic basic order” set out in the country’s
constitution.
It added
that the party “aims to exclude certain population groups from equal
participation in society, to subject them to unconstitutional unequal treatment
and thus to assign them a legally devalued status”.
The decision
will clear the way for tougher measures to monitor the party for suspected
illegal activity, including tapping telephone communications, observing its
meetings and recruiting secret informants.
The AfD is
led by Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, who have called for the “remigration”
of people they deemed to be “poorly integrated”, including German citizens with
roots abroad.
In a joint
statement, Weidel and Chrupalla called the BfV’s decision “politcally
motivated” and a “severe blow against Germany’s federal democracy”.
They said:
“The AfD will continue to defend itself legally against these defamatory
statements that endanger democracy.”
The party
has faced growing calls from opponents for it to be outlawed on the grounds
that it seeks to undermine democratic values, including protection of minority
rights. Such a ban can be sought by either house of parliament – the Bundestag
or the Bundesrat – or by the government itself.
The German
parliament may use the BfV decision to justify an attempt to cut or block
public funding for the party.
But Olaf
Scholz, the outgoing Social Democrat chancellor, warned against rushing to
outlaw the AfD. Some opponents of a ban say it could backfire and help promote
a victim narrative within the party.
Next week,
Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic Union leader, will be sworn in as
Germany’s new chancellor, after his conservative bloc won February’s snap
election. However, his party has lost ground since the vote, with several
recent polls showing the AfD in first place.
Merz will
lead a centre-right government with the Social Democrats. Their coalition
agreement bars any explicit or tacit cooperation with the AfD, a policy that
all the mainstream parties have called a critical “firewall” to protect German
democracy.
However,
Merz has faced calls from within his party to treat the AfD as a normal
opposition force in order to prevent it casting itself as a political martyr.
Merz himself
faced fierce criticism in January for accepting AfD support for motions in
parliament to restrict migration, which Scholz before the election branded an
“unforgivable mistake”.
The AfD won
a record number of seats in the election, theoretically entitling it to chair
several key parliamentary committees. However, the BfV’s decision could make
other parties less willing to lend their support for such an outcome.
Analysts say
the new government will have a limited window to win back voters’ trust or risk
the AfD winning outright at the next general election, planned for 2029.
The party,
which has about 51,000 members, has made strong gains over the last year on the
back of voter frustration with immigration policy and an ailing economy.
It came
first in Thuringia’s regional election in September, marking the first time
since the Nazi period that a far-right party had won a state poll. In the same
month, it also performed well in two other former communist regions.
After active
endorsement by Elon Musk during the campaign, the AfD achieved the best
national result for a hard-right party in Germany since the second world war.
The
Cologne-based BfV based its decision on a 1,100-page report that was presented
to the interior ministry this week.
The report
outlined the party’s efforts to erode democracy, including inciting hostility
toward asylum seekers and migrants and viewing German citizens “with a
background of migration from predominantly Muslim countries” as inferior.
Political
analysts and security authorities say the AfD, which was founded 12 years ago
by a group of Eurosceptic professors, has become more radicalised with each
change in leadership, and particularly when the country faced an influx of
refugees in 2015-16.
Benjamin
Winkler, of the anti-extremist Amadeu Antonio Foundation, welcomed the BfV’s
decision, blaming the AfD for increasing the influence of radical groups while
stoking racist and anti-migrant sentiment in the wider population.
“We see it
in the large number of reports about attacks, and in police data about the
record number of rightwing extremist crimes in Germany,” he told the news
channel n-tv.
The AfD also
calls repeatedly for a break with Germany’s culture of historical remembrance
of the Holocaust, using thinly veiled Nazi slogans, which are outlawed in
Germany.
In an online
chat with Musk in January, Weidel referred to Adolf Hitler as a communist.
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