The German Minister of Defense, Boris Pistorius, along with the Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, Cem Özdemir, have demanded the immediate implementation of a procedure to illegalize the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in certain eastern states of the country.
In a joint column published by the newspaper "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung," both political leaders claim that judicial actions should specifically target the regional structures of the party in Thuringia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Brandenburg, which they attribute an evident ethnonationalist orientation.
In their analysis, the authors argue that within AfD coexist two branches: a classic nationalist wing, susceptible to confrontation in the political arena, and an ethnonationalist current that, in their opinion, directly undermines the constitutional order.
At the same time, they emphasize that the process of illegalization is legally feasible, as it is supported both by the gathered evidence and by the Constitution itself. "We trust that the Constitutional Court will make the correct decisions independently and sovereignly," they state in the text.
In the German system, only the federal government or the two chambers of Parliament are authorized to request the prohibition of a political party. However, the idea currently lacks the essential support, due to the deep doubts expressed by the conservative alliance CDU/CSU, the main partner of the governing coalition, regarding the suitability of this path.
The Minister of the Interior, Alexander Dobrindt, has so far defended the need to establish a quarantine around AfD to prevent its access to the governments of any "German state," instead of promoting a total ban on the party.
The proposal is framed within the strong advance of AfD in the east of the country, where it clearly leads the polls of voting intention in several federal states, with special prominence in Saxony, which will hold regional elections in September.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) classified AfD in 2025 as a "right-wing extremist organization" that pursues goals incompatible with democracy, after producing a report of more than 1,000 pages. Until then, this classification applied only to its structures in Thuringia, Saxony, and Saxony-Anhalt.
According to the organization, the objective of the training is "to exclude certain population groups from equitable participation in society, subject them to unequal and unconstitutional treatment, and, consequently, assign them a legally devalued status."