Friedrich Merz’s expected confirmation as Germany’s next leader this week will take place in the shadow of a row about whether to ban the rival far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party after it was formally classified as “extremist” by the country’s intelligence services.
Merz, 69, a multimillionaire former corporate lawyer, is set to be elected as chancellor by parliament on Tuesday after his centre-right Christian Democrat Union (CDU) agreed on a “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats following weeks of detailed negotiations.
Among those present in the Bundestag to watch his coronation will be Angela Merkel, the former chancellor and erstwhile rival, who long manoeuvred behind the scenes to prevent him from securing the top job.
This weekend, however, political debate is being dominated by what to do about the AfD, which came second in February’s general election with a record 20.8 per cent of the vote and is now polling around 25 per cent, equalling and even overtaking the Christian Democrats.
Merz faces a dilemma about how to handle the issue. “Nerves are high; the once grand coalition has only a small majority. By taking a clear stance ‘for’ or ‘against’ a ban, Merz could anger his own people or his coalition partners,” wrote a commentator for the Tagesspiegel newspaper.
Either way, the controversy is threatening to further complicate Germany’s fragile relations with the Trump administration.
Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, swiftly condemned Friday’s intelligence agency ruling, which gives authorities more powers to use wiretaps and undercover agents to monitor the anti-immigrant party, calling it “tyranny in disguise”. JD Vance, the vice-president, who has met the AfD’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, and praised its policies, accused the “German establishment” of rebuilding a Berlin Wall against the party.
Friedrich Merz has argued in the past against imposing a ban on the AfD
TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The German foreign ministry responded by saying “This is democracy”, and described the decision as “the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law. It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learnt from our history that right-wing extremism needs to be stopped.”
As a result of the report, AfD members who work as policemen or civil servants will face special scrutiny in several German states.
The AfD has been under investigation for several years by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s main domestic security service, which has already deemed several of its chapters to be extreme right-wing. It extended the classification to the entire party on the basis of findings in a 1,100-page report, which has not been published.
In a statement, the agency denounced what it called repeated efforts by the AfD to “undermine the free, democratic” order in Germany, criticised its “ethnic nationalism” and asserted that the party did not consider those with origins in Muslim countries as “equal members of the German people”.
In one section of the report, leaked apparently by the agency itself, Hannes Gnauck, a member of the AfD’s federal executive board, is quoted as telling a meeting last year that Germans “must be allowed to decide again who actually belongs to this people and who doesn’t”. He also spoke of a “law of nature” that means “each and every one of you has more in common with me than with any Syrian or Afghan”.
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Another section cites a posting on X by Martin Reichardt, another MP, asserting: “Misguided migration policy and the abuse of asylum have led to the 100,000-fold importation of people from deeply backward and misogynistic cultures.”
Weidel, who is married to a woman of Sri Lankan origin, has vowed to fight the ruling, denouncing it as politically motivated and “targeted interference in the democratic decision-making process”.
Some mainstream commentators have also argued that comments such as those by Gnauck and Reichardt are legitimate expressions of free speech rather than an attack on the constitutional order.
Nancy Faeser, the outgoing Social Democrat interior minister, insisted that there had been “no political influence whatsoever” on the agency’s conclusions.
The designation of the AfD as “extremist” has nevertheless emboldened those who have argued for some time that parliament should start a procedure to ban the party, even though it has 152 of the 630 seats in the Bundestag.
Although largely on the left, they also include members of Merz’s own party, whose support would be vital. “The federal government must now swiftly initiate ban proceedings to protect our democracy,” Daniel Günther, the Christian Democrat premier of the northern state of Schleswig Holstein, told the news magazine Der Spiegel.
Attempting to impose such a ban is a long and complicated process that may not succeed, however, and would effectively disenfranchise the ten million Germans who voted for the AfD in February.
It also risks portraying the party as a martyr, which could further boost its popularity, especially in the former communist east, where it is backed by one in three of voters.
Merz has argued in the past against such a ban, but during the election campaign he pursued a somewhat contradictory strategy towards the AfD. While arguing for the maintenance of a “firewall” against the party, he also controversially relied on its votes to pass a motion in the Bundestag calling for an “end to illegal immigration”.
The future chancellor clearly sees a tougher line on immigration as a way of denting the AfD’s appeal. The new government has vowed to expand border checks and turn away undocumented asylum seekers, starting the day he is sworn in. “Anyone who tries to enter Germany illegally must expect that the German border will be the end of the road from May 6,” Thorsten Frei, the next head of the Chancellery, said.