In a wet report of 1,100 pages, German interior intelligence ranked the party on Friday Alternative for Germany (AFD) as “right -wing extremist”. A decision which relaunches the debate on its possible ban a few days of the investor of Friderics Merz as Chancellor.
The ideology of AFD “devalues whole groups of the population in Germany and undermines their human dignity”, which is “not compatible with the democratic order” of the country, declared theConstitution protection office Friday in a press release to justify his judgment.
The training has already promised to “defend itself legally” against this decision which allows the authorities to more easily use surveillance and control means, including private communications, AFD members.
Created in 2013, the party carried out a historical breakthrough during the February 23 legislative electionsarriving second behind the conservatives with a score of more than 20 %, doubled compared to the previous one. Since then, AFD has even exceeded in certain polls the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Friedrich Merz which must be elected Chancellor Tuesday by deputies.
The office underlined in particular “the attitude generally hostile to migrants and Muslims of the party”, which “promotes the propagation and deepening of prejudices, resentments and fears” towards these categories of people. The intelligence service “operates independently” and its decision results “from an exhaustive and neutral examination,” said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser on Friday.
“A blow for democracy”
AFD chiefs, Alice Weidel And Tino Chrupalla, have denounced “a blow for German democracy”, ensuring that the party “will continue to defend itself legally against these defamations (…)”.
+++ Alice Weidel/Tino Chrupalla: “The decision of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is a severe blow to the German democracy!” +++
To explain the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the AfD federal government spokesman Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla share: “Today’s … pic.twitter.com/k8bPjekrcg
– Alice Weidel (@alice_weidel) May 2, 2025
The decision constitutes a small earthquake given the ascent of the party, which dreams of taking power in the next elections of 2029.
The German interior intelligence services had already classified the youth organization and several regional branches of the party as “extremists”, but its global classification at the federal level has a higher dimension. The decision has already relaunched the debate on a possible ban on the party, already brandished in recent months by certain political leaders.
The “enemies of democracy” must be “fought with all the political and legal means available until the danger for our liberal democracy is dismissed,” said the social democratic deputy Ralf Stegner in a reaction to the Handelsblatt newspaper.
The protection of the constitution has classified the entire AfD as “secured right -wing extremist”.
Time to finally stop the trivialization and to finally bury any idea of ”normalizing” the handling of these democracy and elsewhere!– Ralf Stegner MdB (@Ralf_stegner) May 2, 2025
“It is time to finally stop trivializing the situation and putting an end to any idea of” normalization “of the way in which these enemies of democracy in Parliament or elsewhere are dealing! “, He explains on the social network X.
Scholz warns against any “hasty decision”
“There is no automation” after a classification of this type, said Nancy FaeSer. If it should “not be excluded”, the prospect of a “procedure for prohibiting party has, for good reasons, very high constitutional obstacles”. It requires that the Bundestag, the Bundesrat, the two chambers of Parliament, or the German government files a very reasoned complaint with the Constitutional Court of Karlsruhe.
Traveling to Hanover, the outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz has also warned of “a precipitated decision”, the supreme judges who have already rejected all recent prohibition requests.
Friday, the political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder of the University of Cassel (Center) estimated that he was not sure that the new ranking “reduces the attraction of AFD” to his voters, on the Phoenix television channel.
In the middle of the electoral campaign, Friedrich Merz had been accused of having broken the “CORDON SANITARY” Surrounding the extreme right, when conservative deputies and AFD had allied their votes for the first time in order to have a text adopted aimed at hardening migration policy.
In the days that followed, hundreds of thousands of people had demonstrated throughout the country against the Merz initiative, which has been defending itself since any alliance with AFD.
