A participant enters the venue of a far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party convention, in Giessen, Germany, on November 29, 2025. KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP
A German court ruled, on Thursday, February 26, that the country's domestic intelligence agency cannot label the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as a "confirmed right-wing extremist" group, at least for now.
The AfD had challenged the designation, which would empower the spy agency to use broader surveillance powers to monitor it and would embolden its political opponents, who are seeking to ban the anti-immigration party.
The Cologne administrative court found that there were, indeed, efforts to undermine Germany's free democratic order from within the AfD, and highlighted its demands to ban Muslim minarets, public calls to prayer and headscarves in public institutions. However, it ruled that the party as a whole was not "shaped by these efforts" to a degree such that "an anti-constitutional tendency can be established" to characterise the party in its entirety as an extremist group.
The court's decision puts the designation on hold, pending the final outcome of a legal battle between the AfD and Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).
