German intelligence wrangles with courts over AfD extremism

The head of the domestic intelligence agency in the German state of Thuringia has praised a decision taken by its partner agency in Lower Saxony to rate the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as extremist.

Stephan Kramer said he had long expressed the opinion that AfD extremism was evident not only in the states of formerly communist East Germany but also in the states of former West Germany. Thuringia lay in East Germany, while Lower Saxony was in West Germany.

Kramer was speaking to dpa in the Thuringian capital of Erfurt after a Cologne court ruled in an urgent application that the federal domestic intelligence agency could not for the present rate the AfD at federal level as confirmed right-wing extremist and could not describe it as such in public.

Kramer said that the Lower Saxony state agency had collected and evaluated its own information and come to the conclusion that the AfD was a proven extremist association at state level.

The Lower Saxon AfD has taken the state's intelligence agency to court over its mid-February decision to rate the party as right-wing extremist and thus subject to special monitoring under German law. The state thus became the first former West German state to do so.

The Lower Saxon AfD had been monitored as suspect since 2022. After this was extended in 2024, the intelligence agency had to decide by May 2026 whether the rating should be upgraded to "extremist" or terminated.

In 2021, the Thuringian agency was the first in Germany to rate the AfD as "confirmed right-wing extremist."

The different ratings determine to what extent the intelligence organs can investigate the AfD.