Bundestag's parliamentary intelligence committee is actively considering what would happen if the AfD were to enter government at the state level. The chairman of the Bundestag's Parliamentary Oversight Panel (PKGr), CDU politician Marc Henrichmann, told the Tagesspiegel newspaper on Thursday that in such a scenario, it would be conceivable to exclude the domestic intelligence agency of an AfD-governed state from the nationwide intelligence-sharing network.
"With constitutionally questionable parties like the AfD, one would have to weigh the extent to which cooperation between the domestic intelligence agencies is still possible," Henrichmann said. "What matters is: sensitive information must not be allowed to leak."
The discussion is far from hypothetical. In Saxony-Anhalt, voters head to the polls on 6 September to elect a new state parliament. The AfD, which the state's own domestic intelligence agency has classified as a confirmed right-wing extremist organisation, is polling well ahead of the CDU led by Minister-President Sven Schulze. The party's lead candidate in the state is Ulrich Siegmund.
A similar picture is emerging in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where elections are scheduled for 20 September. Polls there also show the AfD with a commanding lead. Several state interior ministers have recently issued public warnings about the implications of an AfD-led government in Saxony-Anhalt.
Should there be a risk of important information leaking under an AfD-led state government, constitutional courts would play a central role, Henrichmann said. "A single party cannot reshape the country on its own. There are democratic safeguards in place to prevent that," he added.
Henrichmann said withholding information entirely would be the wrong approach. "All agencies depend on comprehensive exchange," he said. However, he considered it possible to disconnect a single recipient completely from the network, though he acknowledged this would always involve a trade-off between security and operational effectiveness.
If it came to that, responsibility for handling sensitive information would shift from the state government down to individual agencies and officials. "Then the individual agency, the individual civil servant, bears even greater responsibility for those decisions," Henrichmann said.
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