A fewer days after AfD was qualified as an extremist organization by the German Constitution Protection Office, or civilian counterintelligence, there are first consequences.
Two AfD parliamentarians will not be able to accompany the Minister for Europe of the Land of Hessen on a abroad journey to Serbia and Croatia. The Minister of State Manfred Pentz explained that he could not anticipate global partners to "sit to table with organization representatives who are considered right-right-ectremistic".
The next steps seem inevitable. respective Lands and their Home Affairs Ministers want to examine whether positions in the civilian service – like a judge, police officer, teacher or soldier – will be compatible with membership in the AfD.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated that following the decision of the Constitution Protection Office, it would be impossible for him to elect AfD MPs as committee chairmen in parliament.
The fresh classification besides has consequences inside AfD: 1 associate of the Bundestag leaves the organization and parliamentary club AfD.
Partial blow
For AfD, the counterintelligence study is simply a failure in her efforts to advance political standardisation after successful elections in February 2025, erstwhile it became the second largest political force in Germany with 20.8% of the vote.
The reason for this political wind in the eyes is simply a stricter assessment of the alternate for Germany by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. As of 2 May 2025, it no longer classifies the parties simply as a right-wing extremist reflection case, but as a confirmed right-wing extremist movement.
This is explained in the press release: "The decisive origin for our assessment is the cultural and origin-based knowing of the nation by the AfD, which devalues full groups of the population in Germany and violates their human dignity."
Due to this assessment, the AfD filed a suit against the national Office for the Protection of the Constitution to the Administrative Court of Cologne. Co-chairs of the AfD, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, called the party's categorization as right-right-extremistic "obviously illegal". In their view, the German authorities considered the criticism of German immigration policy a crime. According to organization leaders, it is not AfD that violates the constitution, but German peculiar services.
A peculiar subject of criticism is the fact that civilian counterintelligence is an agency under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior and thus the government. AfD politicians complain that the ruling parties are fighting political opposition through the services.
AfD repeatedly in courts
However, the counterintelligence study is mostly based on independent judicial judgments. They prove how extremist AfD is.
As stated in the landmark ruling of the Münster Higher Administrative Court of 13 May 2024, it is reasonable to fishy that the aim of the AfD is to ‘attribute to German citizens the origin of the migration position legally devalued’. The court cited extended evidence and found AfD's reflection of the Constitution Protection Office justified.
Furthermore, many influential AfD representatives, including organization president in Thuringia Björn Höcke, were convicted by German courts. He repeatedly utilized the slogan of Nazi SA militias from Adolf Hitler during election meetings.
In the past, MP AfD Matthias Helferich referred to himself as “the friendly face of national socialism”. erstwhile AfD MP and justice Birgit Malsack-Winkemann is tried for allegedly supporting a terrorist organization and assisting in the preparation of the coup.
In the face of many evidence of AfD's extremist aspirations, the German abroad Ministry rejected the accusations of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. On Platform X Rubio criticised the more stringent AfD assessment by the German Constitution Protection Office as a “tyranny in hiding”. Berlin replied that the AfD assessment was the consequence of a "well-thought-out and independent investigation to defend our constitution and the regulation of law".
AfD's designation as an extremist organization has fueled the debate on a possible illegalisation procedure. Politicians from various political parties and civilian society organisations support the initiation of specified a procedure by the ultimate Court in Germany, the national Constitutional Court. At the same time, there are sceptical and cautious people in almost all parties to this decision.
The bar for the illegalisation of the political organization in Germany is highly suspended. An application for the dismissal of a organization may be submitted only by the Bundestag, the national Government or the national Representation of the Bundesrat. In proceedings before the Constitutional Tribunal, a majority of two-thirds of the votes of the highest German judges are required. The last successful ban on political organization activities occurred respective decades ago. Politicians have no influence on the decision of the judiciary, they can only make an application.
The proposal for a ban is supported by many constitutional lawyers in Germany. In a legal message of seventeen scientists addressed to the German Bundestag in November 2024, they stated: "The concept of a democracy capable of defending is simply a reaction to the experiences of the Weimar Republic and national socialist terror".
One of the signatories to the message is constitutional law expert Franz Mayer of the University of Bielefeld. For him, it is essential to initiate a prohibition procedure against AfD. – We deliberately took any precautions in the Basic Act after historical experiences with the 3rd Reich – emphasizes the prof. of law in an interview with DW.
He quotes the French politician: "As the celebrated Saint-Just de Richelbourg says: There is no freedom for enemies of freedom!".
The lawyer realizes that this request may have an antifreeze sound, especially abroad. “I have experienced many times in the United States, especially in the United States, how this German approach, which comes from history, must be explained,” he says. However, he believes that this is the right approach, given the German experience of national socialist tyranny, which has transformed the German constitutional state into a strategy of mass panic in a very short time.
Franz Mayer does not share criticism of the AfD's Constitution Protection Office. There are good reasons why the Authority is not an independent institution. Otherwise, it would not be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, she notes.
With respect to the current assessment of the German Constitution Protection Office in the AfD Mayer case, it considers that the circumstantial consequences of civilian service law on individual AfD members are inevitable. “I find it completely unthinkable that extremist judges will stay in positions,” he says.
