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Germany’s
far right bangs at the gates to get into the Munich Security Conference
The
Alternative for Germany party has done everything from suing to attempting to
leverage ties to the Trump administration to end their banishment from the
high-profile event.
February
1, 2026 6:00 pm CET
By Nette
Nöstlinger
BERLIN —
Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is heading back to the Munich
Security Conference (MSC) — reclaiming a seat at one of the world’s most
prestigious security forums after being banished for three straight years.
The
decision to invite AfD lawmakers to the mid-February gathering marks a
significant reversal for the conference and a symbolic win for a party eager to
shed its pariah status by rubbing shoulders with global leaders.
The AfD
mounted an aggressive campaign beginning late last year to regain access to the
MSC, including legal action against conference organizers and attempts to
capitalize on relationships with Trump administration officials.
That
effort appears to have paid off, at least in part. MSC organizers have invited
three AfD parliamentarians to attend this year's conference, though the party
has pushed for more prominent figures — including national co-chair Alice
Weidel — to be included.
“The
invitations were issued because we made an impression with our contacts to the
Americans,” Heinrich Koch, one of three AfD parliamentarians who received an
invite, told POLITICO.
Koch, by
his own account and that of one of the AfD’s legal representatives, was
deployed by the party to gain access to the MSC.
Wolfgang
Ischinger, the prominent German diplomat acting as MSC chair this year, denied
that conference organizers invited the AfD due to a pressure campaign, framing
the decision rather as one that acknowledges a simple political reality: that
the AfD is the largest opposition force in Germany.
“It is a
decision that we took on our own conscience, if you wish, trying to do the
right thing in order to make sure that we would be able to reflect the current
reality,” he told POLITICO. “It would be very difficult for the Munich Security
Conference — which brings together so many opposing views, adversaries, people
who accuse each other [of being] murderers or genocidal people — for us to
justify categorically excluding the largest German opposition party."
Legacy of
Nazi resistance
This year
won’t be the first time AfD politicians have attended the MSC. During
Ischinger's previous tenure as head of the conference, which lasted from 2008
to 2022, AfD politicians with a focus on defense were invited to the
conference.
But since
that time, the AfD has come under the increasing scrutiny of national and state
domestic intelligence agencies tasked with monitoring groups deemed
anti-constitutional, culminating last year in the party's federal
classification as a right-wing extremist organization.
Ischinger's
successor, career diplomat Christoph Heusgen, refused to invite AfD leaders for
the past three conferences, arguing that a party deemed at that point to have
been at least partly right-wing extremist by intelligence authorities had no
place at the event. After all, he argued, the conference was founded after
World War II by Ewald von Kleist, one of the aristocratic Wehrmacht officers
now revered in Germany for having partaken in the failed 1944 plot to
assassinate Adolf Hitler.
“I can
well imagine that Ewald von Kleist would have supported my decision against the
AfD,” Heusgen told German newspaper Tagesspiegel.
Heusgen
stepped aside after last year's conference, and this year Ischinger is back at
the helm. But it was in response to Heusgen’s rejection of the party that the
AfD sued late last year to get into the conference this February. The AfD said
it was a victim of “targeted exclusion,” according to documents from the Munich
regional court seen by POLITICO.
“The
plaintiff wishes to be involved in foreign policy and security policy issues in
order to have a say as an opposition faction,” the court said. But the court
ultimately rejected the AfD’s argument, ruling last December that the MSC, as a
private organization, is free to choose whom to invite.
Koch, who
was in court on behalf of the AfD parliamentary group, says he pressured the
MSC side during the proceeding to invite party members by threatening to come
to the conference anyway as guests of the American delegation. Soon after, his
party received three invitations, he said.
The MSC
denied in emailed comments to POLITICO that such threats had led to the
invites.
Empty
threats?
The AfD’s
threats appear to have consisted mostly of bluster. Koch said he reached out to
the office of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, who is set to attend the conference,
but never heard back from the Republican lawmaker. Graham did not respond to
three requests for comment.
The
threat nevertheless illustrates how the AfD has sought to utilize past support
from the Trump administration to pressure the MSC and, more broadly, to end its
domestic political ostracization. The AfD's effort to get into the MSC can be
seen as part of a larger push to knock down the so-called firewall mainstream
forces have erected around the far right, precluding close cooperation with the
party despite its rising popularity.
In that
effort, the AfD has received support from the highest rungs of the Trump
administration. At last year’s MSC, U.S. Vice President JD Vance sharply
criticized European centrists for excluding the far right, declaring “there's
no room for firewalls." Following his speech, JD Vance met with AfD
national co-leader Alice Weidel in a Munich hotel.
Koch said
the AfD would attempt to organize a similar high-level meeting this year,
though it’s not clear Vance will attend the February conference. Koch said he
has also sought an invitation for Weidel, but the MSC had denied it. The MSC’s
Ischinger said he and his team would not issue any further invitations to AfD
politicians.
Weidel's
spokesperson, Daniel Tapp, denied that the AfD had used the prospect of another
meeting with a high-level Trump administration official to press for invites to
the MSC, but said a “certain pressure” had led to three of its lawmakers being
invited.
Weidel’s
plans for the conference remain unclear. “We will wait and see over the next
few days whether anything else develops in this matter,” said Tapp late last
month. As of Friday, no meeting involving Weidel and U.S. officials during the
MSC had been planned, according to Tapp.
Ischinger
said any AfD events occurring outside the confines of the MSC are irrelevant to
the conference.
"They
can organize a huge conference, you know, if you ask me,” he said. “And it's
not my business to stop them or discuss this with them. It's their business,
but it has nothing to do with the Munich Security Conference.”
POLITICO
is an official media partner of this year’s Munich Security Conference.
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