German court suspends surveillance of AfD, for now
March 5, 2021
An ongoing legal challenge brought by the Alternative for Germany is holding up the domestic intelligence agency's plans to monitor the party.
The German domestic intelligence agency has been ordered to suspend plans to place the AfD under surveillanceImage: Hendrik Schmidt/dpa-Zentralbild/picture alliance
German media had reported a day earlier that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), had placed the entire AfD under surveillance.
The BfV was apparently unable to announce the decision officially due to the ongoing legal dispute.
It filed the cases after reports leaked that the BfV was preparing to put the whole party under surveillance over potential ties to far-right extremism.
The AfD reasoned that being investigated would undermine its right to participate in elections on an equal footing with other political parties.
The AfD had previously secured a court ruling that prevented the BfV publicly calling it a "case under investigation."
AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks
Leading members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have often made provocative, if not outright offensive, remarks — targeting refugees or evoking Nazi terminology.
Image: Britta Pedersen/dpa/picture alliance
Björn Höcke
The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia first made headlines in 2017 for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. In July 2023, he echoed Nazi rhetoric by declaring that "This EU must die so that the true Europe may live." In 2019, a court ruled that it was not slanderous to describe Höcke as a fascist.
Image: picture-alliance/Arifoto Ug/Candy Welz
Alice Weidel
One of the best-known public faces of the AfD, party co-chair Alice Weidel rarely shies away from causing a row. Her belligerent rhetoric caused particular controversy in a Bundestag speech in 2018, when she declared, "burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state."
Image: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa/picture-alliance
Maximilian Krah
Maximilian Krah, the AfD's top candidate in the 2024 European Parliament election, has called the EU a "vassal" of the US and wants to replace it with a "confederacy of fatherlands." He also wants to end support for Ukraine, and has warned on Twitter that immigration will lead to an "Umvolkung" of the German people — a Nazi-era term similar to the far-right's "great replacement" conspiracy theory.
Image: Ronny Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images
Alexander Gauland
Former parliamentary party leader Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. He said Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."
Christian Lüth
Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."
Image: Soeren Stache/dpa/picture-alliance
Beatrix von Storch
Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Murat
Harald Weyel
Not all of the AfD's scandals are about racism: Sometimes they are just revealing. Bundestag member Harald Weyel was caught in a scandal in September 2022 when a microphone he clearly didn't know was on caught him expressing his hope that Germany would suffer a "dramatic winter" of high energy prices or else "things will just go on as ever."
Image: Christoph Hardt /Future Image/imago images
Andre Poggenburg
Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/J. Wolf
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What the Cologne court said
The Cologne administrative court said in a statement that it had ruled to suspend moves by domestic intelligence against the party for now. This was to prevent "unjustifiable interference" with the equal opportunities of political parties.
It said the BfV had failed to stick to an agreement to ensure its surveillance remained classified.
"This basis of trust has now been destroyed. With every announcement, the encroachment on the equal opportunities of the political parties deepens," it added.
The agency had previously pledged to not reveal any details on its assessment of the AfD publicly until the legal challenge was resolved and to refrain from spying on its lawmakers or candidates.
The BfV declined to comment on the suspension but it can challenge the ruling.
An appeal will have to be decided by the higher administrative court in Münster, the Cologne court said.
