Germany’s domestic spy agency has classified the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party as “extremist”
Berlin should not rush into trying to ban the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday.
Earlier in the day, a lengthy report by Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) classified the populist party as “extremist,” accusing it of being racist in its anti-migrant rhetoric, and of showing signs of acting against the country’s democracy. The classification opens the door to a potential ban, and for the domestic spy agency to increase surveillance of the AfD, as is the case with extremist groups such as the Islamic State.
“I think this is something that cannot be rushed into,” Scholz said when asked about banning the AfD outright.
He went on to point out that Germany’s “Federal Constitutional Court has rejected all recent applications for bans.”
He referred to Germany’s numerous unsuccessful past attempts to outlaw the former nationalist National Democratic Party (NDP) as an example of the legal troubles that could follow trying to ban the AfD.
The NDP weathered years of federal attempts to prohibit it, changing its name to The Homeland in 2023. The party did not run in the 2025 German elections.
The AfD, which has seen a surge in popularity in the polls in recent months, has condemned the BfV report as a “severe blow to the German democracy.”
“The AfD is the strongest party in current polls… Nevertheless, the AfD, as an opposition party, is now being publicly discredited and criminalized shortly before the change of government,” co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla said in a joint statement.
A Forsa poll from last month indicated that AfD had overtaken incoming Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) as the most popular political party in the country.
