{"id":86523,"date":"2025-05-09T05:17:13","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T05:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/86523\/"},"modified":"2025-05-09T05:17:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T05:17:13","slug":"german-spy-agency-suspends-extremist-designation-of-far-right-afd-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/86523\/","title":{"rendered":"German spy agency suspends ‘extremist’ designation of far-right AfD party"},"content":{"rendered":"

BERLIN — Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said Thursday it will await a court ruling before moving forward with plans to classify the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party as a \u201c right-wing extremist<\/a> \u201d movement, a step that could subject the party to broader surveillance and scrutiny of its activities.<\/p>\n

The announced pause comes after the party, known as AfD, filed a lawsuit<\/a> in the western city of Cologne against the move by the intelligence service and the party’s supporters alleged a politically motivated crackdown. <\/p>\n

German officials have denied that allegation and have faulted what they called the party’s \u201congoing agitation\u201d against refugees and migrants.<\/p>\n

The AfD\u2019s co-leaders, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, responded in a joint statement saying the intelligence service\u2019s decision Thursday was \u201ca first important step\u201d that would help \u201ccounter the accusation of right-wing extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pause by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution means that it cannot move forward with previous plans to use enhanced tools like video and audio surveillance, and use of informants, to scrutinize the activities of the AfD, which came second in parliamentary elections<\/a> in February. It does not mean that the intelligence agency has dropped those plans for good.<\/p>\n

The decision, months in the making, came days before the new German government led by conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz took office on Tuesday \u2014 replacing the outgoing coalition led by the Social Democrats’ Olaf Scholz. <\/p>\n

The intelligence agency cited a number of pronouncements by AfD officials, including statements like, “Every additional foreigner in this country is one too many,\u201d the German news agency DPA reported.<\/p>\n

The U.S. administration has criticized the decision by the intelligence service, prompting a retort from the German Foreign Ministry.<\/p>\n

In a social media post last week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/a> called on Germany to undo the classification, saying the move to give new powers to the spy agency to watch the opposition amounted to \u201ctyranny in disguise.\u201d <\/p>\n

The German Foreign Ministry responded by saying the decision resulted from an independent investigation to protect Germany’s Constitution and the rule of law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN — Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said Thursday it will await a court ruling before moving forward with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[41526,3907,2000,299,4179,1824,41525,40,7136,285,36202,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-86523","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-41526","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-government-surveillance","15":"tag-immigration","16":"tag-legal-proceedings","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-radicalism","19":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114476183918625755","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86523","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=86523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}