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Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has said it will temporarily stop referring to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as an extremist organisation.<\/p>\n
That’s according to a court in the western city of Cologne which says the BfV will refrain from using the designation pending litigation.<\/p>\n
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“The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution today declared in the court proceedings – without recognising any legal obligation – that it would provisionally suspend the classification of the AfD as a ‘confirmed right-wing extremist movement’ until the court has ruled on the urgent application,” a statement from the court said.<\/p>\n
That means that the BfV will no longer publicly use the extremist group categorisation until the end of the proceedings. <\/p>\n
The decision also means that the BfV has fewer legal options for monitoring the AfD. <\/p>\n
The extremist designation gave security services greater powers to monitor the AfD, including the recruitment of informants and the legal option of intercepting party communications.<\/p>\n
AfD sees decision as partial success<\/p>\n
In a statement, which was also published on X, party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla referred to the announcement as a “partial success.”<\/p>\n
“We are defending ourselves with all legal means against the upgrading by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution,” they said. <\/p>\n
Weidel and Chrupalla also called the suspension of the categorisation a “first important step towards our actual exoneration.” <\/p>\n
The AfD filed a lawsuit against the BfV on 5 May, three days after the “right-wing extremist” designation was issued.<\/p>\n
Daniel Tapp, a spokesperson for the AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel, told the dpa news agency that a letter had been sent to the responsible administrative court in Cologne.<\/p>\n
The BfV had concluded “after intensive examination” over a three-year period that racist and anti-Muslim stances advanced by the party were incompatible with the “free democratic order” set out in the country’s constitution.<\/p>\n
In addition to the initial appeal, the AfD also applied for a so-called hanging order. <\/p>\n
This would have allowed the court to temporarily suspend the categorisation as “definitely right-wing extremist”.<\/p>\n
Without this suspension order, the AfD argued, there would be “irreparable damage” to the party and to the democratic decision-making process. <\/p>\n
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The party also described the categorisation as an “attack on democracy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has said it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[1944,37213,2000,299,1105,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-84784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-afd-alternative-fur-deutschland","9":"tag-constitution","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-far-right","13":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114472605746834571","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}