Office for the Protection of the Constitution suspends classification of AfD as confirmed right-wing extremist

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is temporarily suspending the classification of the AfD as a confirmed right-wing extremist movement and will no longer publicly refer to the party as such. This so-called standstill pledge applies until the Cologne Administrative Court has ruled on the AfD's urgent appeal, as the court announced on Thursday. With the classification, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is also putting the observation of the party as a confirmed right-wing extremist movement on hold.

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If a party is classified as right-wing extremist, this lowers the threshold for observation and information gathering measures. It is then lower than if the authorities merely list a party as a suspected case, as they did until Friday last week and now continue to do so for the time being. It is not yet known when the court will rule on the AfD's urgent application.

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On Friday, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution presented its reassessment of the AfD after a year-long investigation. The reason for the classification was an “extremist character of the party as a whole that disregards human dignity”, it said. “The ethnic and descent-based understanding of the people that prevails in the party is not compatible with the free democratic basic order”, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution announced last week. The reassessment also fueled a new debate about a possible ban procedure against the party.

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The AfD is taking legal action against the upgrade. It has filed a lawsuit and an urgent appeal with the Cologne court. This court has jurisdiction because the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is based there. It already ruled on the classification of the AfD as a suspected case in 2022. The AfD lost on that occasion, as it did later before the North Rhine-Westphalian Higher Administrative Court in Münster.

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The AfD is taking legal action against the upgrade. It has filed a lawsuit and an urgent appeal with the Cologne court. This court has jurisdiction because the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is based there. It already ruled on the classification of the AfD as a suspected case in 2022. The AfD lost on that occasion, as it did later before the North Rhine-Westphalian Higher Administrative Court in Münster. In these proceedings, the AfD had also filed an urgent application in Cologne at the beginning of 2021, and here too the Office for the Protection of the Constitution promised to stand still. As it did not adhere to this, the Administrative Court issued an interim ruling in March 2021, obliging it not to classify the AfD as a suspected case or treat it as such for the time being. This also applied until the decision on the urgent appeal.
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According to the court, this was planned for July 2021, but was ultimately not made until March 2022 due to the late submission of files by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, when the ruling was also made. The AfD's urgent application failed at the time, as did its lawsuit. In the current legal dispute over the new classification as confirmed right-wing extremist, the administrative court has not yet made a substantive decision. In the standstill agreement, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution also promised to remove the press release about the classification from its website. By midday on Thursday, the press release was no longer available. AfD chairmen Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel described the standstill agreement as a “partial success against the Office for the Protection of the Constitution”.