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Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified the entire Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as rightwing extremist, reigniting the debate over whether it should be banned.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) said on Friday that the party espoused an ethnic-based approach to the German population and migrant groups. That led to an “exclusionary” approach and “continuous agitation against certain individuals or groups of individuals” — which put the AfD at odds with the values enshrined in the constitution.
The agency had previously labelled several regional branches of the AfD as rightwing extremist, which meant their members were put under increased surveillance.
The designation for the entire party lowers the threshold intelligence agents must meet to justify the use of informants as well as secret audio and video recordings.
It also reopens the debate on whether to ban the party, a step that would end its access to state funding.
Lars Klingbeil, who will serve as vice-chancellor in the new German government that takes office next week, said Friday’s decision “must not be without consequences”.
While he stressed that he did not want to produce a “quick headline”, Klingbeil said political decision makers had a “responsibility to protect our democracy from the enemies of democracy”. He added that his Social Democrats, which will be the junior partner in the coalition led by the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), must evaluate the findings and quickly decide how to respond.
Senior Green opposition figures also described the decision as an “important building block” in resuming efforts to ban the AfD.
But the hurdles for a ban are high and many prominent figures — including Germany’s next chancellor Friedrich Merz and many in his CDU — have said they would oppose such a move for fear of playing into the hands of the AfD.
Germany’s outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday warned against “rushing into” any decision. Merz did not immediately respond to the news.
The move drew opprobrium from one of the most senior figures in Donald Trump’s US administration, which gave unprecedented support to the AfD in the lead-up to Germany’s nationwide elections in February.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said the move against the AfD was “not democracy — it’s tyranny in disguise”.
AfD co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla described the decision by the BfV as “politically motivated”, adding that the party would take legal steps to defend itself against what it called “defamations that endanger democracy”.
The AfD — which last year faced mass protests after it emerged that senior officials had secretly discussed deporting German citizens with migrant backgrounds — targeted Muslims and migrants in a way that encouraged “prejudices, resentment, and fears” in violation of constitutional norms, the BfV said.
“The decisive factor for our assessment is the AfD’s ethnic-based understanding of the population, which devalues entire population groups in Germany and violates their human dignity,” said the BfV’s two vice presidents, Sinan Selen and Silke Willems, adding that the decision had been taken after three years of careful review.
The BfV was founded after the second world war and expends much of its energy trying to guard against left- and right-wing extremism in order to avoid a repeat of the circumstances that led to the rise to power of the Nazis.
The agency already “suspected” the AfD of being rightwing extremist — a decision upheld by a court last year.
The classification “confirmed rightwing extremist” reflects the steady shift to the right of a party that was founded in 2013 as a protest against Eurozone bailouts but has subsequently embraced ethno-nationalism and flirted with Nazi-era slogans.
Still, warnings about the extremist nature of some of its leading figures have failed to prevent it from making significant electoral gains.
The AfD won regional elections — in two former communist east German states — for the first time last year. In February’s parliamentary election, it secured a historic second place with 21 per cent of the vote. Since then, at least two opinion polls have put the party ahead of future chancellor Merz’s CDU.
Benjamin Höhne, an expert on the AfD at Chemnitz Technical University, said that in east Germany, where several of the party’s regional associations had long been classified as extremist, voters were backing the party with their eyes open. “They vote for the AfD because they know they will get the far right — and they want it.”
Höhne said it was unclear if the classification would deter voters in west Germany. “I have my doubts,” he said. “If we see such an effect it won’t be huge.”
Merz has ruled out co-operation with the AfD but has faced calls from within his own party in recent weeks to treat it more like a normal party, allowing it to chair parliamentary committees in recognition of its popularity among a sizeable part of the electorate.
Other lawmakers have previously pushed for an outright ban on the party — a step that would end its access to state funding. Advocates of that move are likely to be emboldened by Friday’s classification. However, support for a ban has so far remained a minority view among MPs.
