As Germany marked the 80th anniversary of the end of the Nazi regime, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned that far-right populists were reviving “old, evil spirits”.
Days earlier, the entire Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was classified as a right-wing extremist organisation by the country’s domestic intelligence service.
That move has reignited a fraught debate about banning a party that secured a historic second place in February’s parliamentary elections and placed a momentous decision in the lap of the nation’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz.
“He takes it very seriously,” one of the chancellor’s closest allies told the Financial Times.
Merz said earlier this year that the AfD was seeking to “annihilate” his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and “undermine the foundations of our democracy”. He has also drawn a direct comparison between the AfD and rise to power of the Nazis, saying that “one ‘33” was enough for Germany.
But he has previously expressed scepticism about the wisdom of using a ban in the battle against the far right.
Merz responded to the new classification by saying the new government would decide how to act only “after the most careful examination”, warning: “You can’t ban 10mn voters.”
All established political parties agree on the threat posed by a party deemed to be at odds with the values of Germany’s constitution due to its promotion of anti-immigrant and racist sentiment.
Yet there are deep and fundamental disagreements about asking the constitutional court to examine the idea of a ban.
Supporters of such a move within Merz’s CDU include Tilman Kuban, a lawmaker and former leader of the party’s youth branch.
“Democrats must show their colours,” Kuban said. “Democracies that take themselves seriously must defend themselves against their enemies — with the means provided by the constitution.”
But such voices have remained a minority in a conservative party that has tended to argue it is better to use policy to take the sting out of the far-right. Markus Söder, leader of Merz’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), said the AfD would not be tackled by “weeping and whining” but rather by “finally doing politics properly”.
The German public is also divided, with support for a ban only marginally above 50 per cent, according to a survey published at the weekend by the pollster Insa.
While the rise of the far right is a Europe-wide phenomenon, it is treated with particular gravity in Germany. The postwar constitution, approved by the US and other Allied powers after their defeat of Adolf Hitler, describes the country as a “vigilant democracy” and equips it with the tools to enforce that status — including party bans.
But only twice in Germany’s postwar history has a party been successfully banned. The Socialist Reich party, a successor to the Nazis, was outlawed in 1952 and the Communist party was banned four years later.
Two more recent attempts to ban the neo-Nazi National Democratic party of Germany (NPD) were rebuffed by the constitutional court in 2003 and in 2017. In the second instance, the court ruled that even though the NPD was extremist, it was not big enough to present a serious threat to German democracy.
The AfD poses the opposite problem: it could be too big to ban. After winning 21 per cent of the February vote, polling has suggested its support has grown even more at about 24 per cent — and in some surveys even surpassing the CDU.
“It is quite challenging to use party bans as an instrument against populist parties in Europe today,” said Angela Bourne, a professor of European politics at Roskilde University in Denmark. “They are elected by many people, in free and fair elections. It’s almost as if they’re too powerful.”
The government or any of the two chambers of parliament can call on the constitutional court to outlaw the party — a process that experts say would take at least two years.
A ban would lead to the dissolution of the party and sitting MPs would lose their mandates. The AfD’s property could be confiscated. And senior figures would be banned from setting up successor organisations — although critics cautioned that this would be tough to police.
But sceptics warn that the complex process could easily backfire — especially if it failed.
“I know that it is a very difficult legal path that involves many risks,” said Dietmar Woidke, the Social Democrat premier of the eastern state of Brandenburg, who was involved in one of the unsuccessful attempts to ban the NPD.
Interior minister Alexander Dobrindt, a CSU politician, has also voiced concern that there was insufficient evidence to prove the AfD was “combatively and aggressively” undermining German democracy.
Others warn that triggering the process would only bolster the party’s claims that it was being persecuted. “The danger is that it would actually help the AfD, which is depicting itself as the victim,” said Andreas Busch, a professor of political science at Göttingen university.
Yet supporters of a ban argue that the AfD will portray itself as a victim no matter what.
Ricarda Lang — a former Green party co-leader and one of the most vocal advocates of a ban — has said the authors of Germany’s postwar constitution had bestowed it with a mechanism to outlaw political entities precisely because, like the Nazis, future parties could use democracy to seize power and then subvert it.
“I am convinced that the AfD is exactly one such party,” she wrote in article for the news site Focus. “Why should we not use the party ban?”
Other supporters say a ban could weaken the far right.
“I’m sure the issues wouldn’t die out and the problem wouldn’t go away,” said Michaela Hailbronner, a law professor at the University of Münster. “The question is whether you could sap some political strength and break up the movement a bit.”
The rightwing extremist label has already triggered an debate within the AfD.
AfD co-chairs Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla described this month’s decision to label the party right-wing extremist as “politically motivated”.
Martin Vincentz, who as a top party official from North Rhine-Westphalia has sought to chart a relatively moderate course, echoed that view but also warned party radicals not to “make things easier for our political opponents” by constantly pushing the limits of acceptable speech.
Lawmaker Sieghard Knodel announced his resignation from the party following the decision, citing the need to “protect my private and business environment”.
But even critics of the AfD raised questions about the timing of the classification, which was approved by the Social Democrat interior minister Nancy Faeser in her final days of office, as well as the domestic intelligence service’s decision not to publish its 1,100-page expert report.
US President Donald Trump’s secretary of state Marco Rubio accused the German state of “tyranny in disguise”, further complicating Merz’s efforts to build ties with an administration that has backed the AfD and urged politicians to stop excluding the party from power-sharing agreements.
On Tuesday, the political magazine Cicero decided to publish the entire secret report online, arguing that “without transparency, democracy cannot function”.
The classification was last week paused after the AfD lodged a challenge — a standard part of the legal process. But, if upheld, it will make it easier for the intelligence service to snoop on the communications of party officials and plant or cultivate informants within their ranks.
Some AfD members could also lose their weapons licences. Stefan Möller, an AfD MP, lost his ability to hunt wild boar after his regional association in Thuringia was classified as rightwing extremist in 2021 — a move he attacked as a form of “harassment” that he said had scared away some 70 members who were committed hunters.
But the most significant impact for the AfD is likely to be on funding.
Michael Koß, an expert on party funding at Leuphana University Lüneburg, said the AfD’s hopes of securing a slice of the €700mn distributed each year to political foundations were likely to be dashed after the classification. “This makes a really strong case for depriving them of this money,” he said.
Still, few suggest that limiting funding or jeopardising weapons licences will be enough to inflict serious harm on the party.
Ban advocates warn that Merz — who promised seven years ago when the AfD was polling at about 15 per cent that he could halve its support — is running out of time. The AfD is gunning for a first-place finish in the 2029 parliamentary elections, a scenario that would plunge Europe’s largest nation into a political crisis.
“The previous federal government hesitated for a very long time and missed its opportunity,” said Julia Dück, who helped organise anti-AfD protests in dozens of German cities last week. “The new government can now continue to watch — or finally start the process for a ban.”
Additional reporting by Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in Berlin
