Ten days earlier than the elections in Baden-Württemberg, the beginning of a sequence of high-stakes regional elections which can punctuate German political information between now and the tip of the 12 months, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) occasion has simply gained an essential symbolic victory. The Cologne administrative courtroom confirmed, Thursday February 26, the suspension of the choice to categorise it as a company “proven extreme right”made by the intelligence providers on May 2, 2025. They then determined to categorise the occasion as “extremist » in order to be able to have increased means of surveillance, such as the possibility of carrying out wiretapping and recruiting informants. At the end of three years of investigation, they indicated that they had “certainties” on the “ aspirations [du parti] against the fundamental liberal and democratic order.
The AfD immediately contested the decision to classify the intelligence services, housed in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and requested its suspension while the investigation into the merits was carried out by the Cologne court. Pending this interim decision, the classification was automatically suspended, so that it was never actually applied. The judges therefore confirmed this suspension on Thursday, considering that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution was not “not authorized to classify and treat the AfD as a proven right-wing extremist movement until the conclusion of the main proceedings at first instance before the Cologne Administrative Court”in keeping with the courtroom press launch.
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https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2026/02/26/la-justice-allemande-offre-au-parti-d-extreme-droite-afd-une-victoire-symbolique_6668428_3210.html