The German intelligence agency of Germany said that it would expect a court decision before going forward with plans to classify the anti-immigration alternative for the German party (AFD) as a right-wing extremist movement “, a stage which could submit the party to a broader surveillance and to an extremist examination of its activities.
The announced break comes after the party filed a complaint in the western city of Cologne against this decision by the BFV Intelligence Service and that the party supporters allegedly alleged a politically motivated repression.
German officials have denied this allegation and criticized what they called “the agitation in progress” of the party against refugees and migrants.
AFD co-leaders, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, replied in a joint statement saying that the intelligence decision was “an important first step” which would help “counter the accusation of right-wing extremism”.
The break by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution means that it cannot go ahead with the previous plans to use improved tools such as video surveillance and audio surveillance, and use informants, to examine AFD activities, second in parliamentary elections in February.
This does not mean that the intelligence agency has abandoned these plans for good.
The decision, months of taking place, occurred a few days before the new German government led by Conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz came into office on Tuesday, replacing the outgoing coalition led by Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats.
The intelligence agency has cited a number of declarations by AFD officials, including declarations such as “each additional foreigner in this country is too much,” said the German news agency DPA.
The American administration criticized the decision by the intelligence service, provoking a replica from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In a social media position last week, the American secretary of state, Marco Rubio, called on Germany to cancel the classification, claiming that the decision to give new powers to the espionage agency to monitor the opposition was equivalent to “the disguised tyranny”.
The German Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied by saying that the decision results from an independent investigation to protect the German Constitution and the rule of law.
