Germany’s domestic intelligence agency on Friday classified the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as an extremist entity that threatens democracy, a move enabling it to better monitor the party that came second in February’s federal election.
The BfV agency’s finding, based on a 1,100-page expert report, that the AfD is racist and anti-Muslim allows the authorities to increase surveillance of the party, including by recruiting confidential informants and intercepting communications.
The stigma could also hamper the party’s ability to attract members, while public funding could be at risk.
The AfD, which currently tops several opinion polls, condemned the decision, while political analysts said it risked further fueling support for the party.
“Central to our assessment is the ethnically and ancestrally defined concept of the people that shapes the AfD, which devalues entire segments of the population in Germany and violates their human dignity,” the domestic intelligence agency said in a statement.
“This concept is reflected in the party’s overall anti-migrant and anti-Muslim stance.”
The AfD has “defamed and vilified” individuals and groups, stirring up “irrational fears and hostility toward them,” it added.
In the party’s first response to the report, the leader of a regional parliamentary group, Anton Baron, said: “It is sad to see the state of democracy in our country when the established parties now resort to the most politically questionable means to act against the strongest opposition party.”
Heated debate
The intelligence decision comes days before conservative leader Friedrich Merz is due to be sworn in as Germany’s new chancellor and amid a heated debate within his party over how to deal with the AfD in the new parliament.
The party won a record number of seats, theoretically entitling it to chair several key parliamentary committees.
A prominent Merz ally, Jens Spahn, has called for treating the AfD as a regular opposition party in parliamentary procedures, arguing that this approach prevents the party from adopting a ‘victim’ narrative.
However, other established parties as well as many within Spahn’s own conservatives have rejected that approach – and could use Friday’s news as justification for blocking AfD attempts to lead key committees.
“There is tension between a party’s claim to chair positions based on its size and the freedom of conscience of the members of parliament,” said political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder at Kassel University.
“Now, these members can argue that AfD representatives do not meet the necessary standards. The signs are mounting that the AfD is not a normal party, and as a result, it will continue to be marginalized.”
The classification could reignite attempts to get the AfD banned, but Germany’s outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose Social Democrats will be the junior partner in Merz’s new coalition, advised against rushing to outlaw the AfD.
“I am against a quick shot, we have to evaluate the classification carefully,” he said on Friday at a church convention in the northern city of Hanover.
The German parliament could also attempt to limit or halt public funding to the AfD – but for that authorities would need evidence that the party is explicitly out to undermine or even overthrow German democracy.
Certain factions of the AfD such as its youth wing had already been classified as extremist, while the party at large was classified as a suspected extremist case in 2021.
Created to protest the euro zone bailouts in 2013, the euroskeptic AfD morphed into an anti-migration party after Germany’s decision to take in a large wave of refugees in 2015.
That the BfV agency needs a certain classification to be able to monitor a political party reflects the fact it is more legally restrained than other European intelligence services, in reaction to the country’s experience under both Nazi and Communist rule.