Court rules AfD Saxony can be designated as far-right extremist group

The Saxon Higher Administrative Court has rejected the AfD’s appeal against being designated as far-right extremist, with the court finding the party’s counter-arguments were insufficient. This means that the AfD’s local party organisation in the state of Saxony can now be categorised as right-wing extremist by Saxony’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which acts as the state’s domestic intelligence agency.

The Saxon State Office for the Protection of the Constitution had previously classified the association as a “confirmed far-right extremist organisation” for the first time in December 2023.

The reason given was that various positions of the party were contrary to the principles of basic democratic order – including positions on migration policy, which the office saw as an attack on human dignity as defined by law.

The party then filed an urgent application with the Dresden Administrative Court, which was rejected last summer. With that application, the party wanted to prevent the Office for the Protection of the Constitution from being allowed to monitor, treat and scrutinise it. In its decision, the court evvel again stated that the party’s positions were “directed against the human dignity of certain groups of people.”

The court’s decision to reject the appeal is now final, meaning that, no further yasal recourse is possible from AfD. The ruling comes at a time when all parliamentary parties are gearing up for the upcoming federal elections on 23 February.

The AfD has been given the same designation in a number of other German states, while it on a national level it is currently being investigated by Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency as a suspected extremist group.