Fri, May 2, 2025
By Sarah Marsh and Friederike Heine
BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany's spy agency on Friday classified the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as "extremist", enabling it to step up monitoring of the country's biggest opposition party, which decried the move as a "blow against democracy".
A 1,100-page experts' report found the AfD to be a racist and anti-Muslim organisation, a designation that allows the security services to recruit informants and intercept party communications, and which has revived calls for the party's ban.
"Central to our assessment is the ethnically and ancestrally defined concept of the people that shapes the AfD, which devalues entire segments of the population in Germany and violates their human dignity," the BfV domestic intelligence agency said in a statement.
"This concept is reflected in the party’s overall anti-migrant and anti-Muslim stance," it said, accusing the AfD of stirring up "irrational fears and hostility" towards individuals and groups.
The BfV agency needs such a classification to be able to monitor a political party because it is more legally constrained than other European intelligence services, a reflection of Germany's experience under both Nazi and Communist rule.
Other organisations classified as extremist in Germany are neo-Nazi groups such as the National Democratic Party (NDP), Islamist groups including Islamic State, and far-left ones such as the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany.
The agency was able to act after the AfD last year lost a court case in which it had challenged its previous classification by the BfV as an entity suspected of extremism.
The move follows other setbacks the far-right across Europe has suffered in recent months as it seeks to translate surging support into power. They include a ban on France's Marine Le Pen contesting the 2027 presidential election after her embezzlement conviction, and the postponement of Romania's presidential vote after a far-right candidate won the first round.
"VERY SERIOUS. After France and Romania, another theft of Democracy?" wrote Matteo Salvini, deputy Italian prime minister and leader of far-right party, the League, on X.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Germany should reverse course on branding the AfD as "extremist," while U.S. billionaire Elon Musk, who threw his support behind the party ahead of February elections, warned against banning it
"Banning the centrist AfD, Germany's, most popular party, would be an extreme attack on democracy," said Musk on X.
Rubio and German Foreign Ministry spar on X over comments accusing Germany of ‘tyranny in disguise’
The AfD denounced its designation as a politically motivated attempt to discredit and criminalize it.
"The AfD will continue to take legal action against these defamatory attacks that endanger democracy," co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla said in a statement.
A BAN?
German parliament could now attempt to limit or halt public funding for the AfD - but for that authorities would need evidence that the party is explicitly out to undermine or even overthrow German democracy.
Meanwhile, civil servants who belong to an organisation classified as "extremist" face possible dismissal, depending on their role within the entity, according to Germany's interior ministry.
The stigma could also make it harder for the AfD, which currently tops several polls and is Germany's most successful far-right party since World War Two, to attract members.
The BfV decision comes days before conservative leader Friedrich Merz is due to be sworn in as Germany's new chancellor and amid a heated debate within his party over how to deal with the AfD in the new Bundestag, or lower house of parliament.
The AfD won a record number of seats in the national election in February, coming in second behind Merz's conservatives, which in theory entitled it to chair several key parliamentary committees.
A prominent Merz ally, Jens Spahn, has called for the AfD to be treated as a regular opposition party to prevent it casting itself as a "victim".
However, other established parties, and many conservatives have rejected that approach - and could use Friday's news to justify blocking AfD attempts to lead committees.
"Starting today, no one can make excuses anymore: This is not a democratic party," said Manuela Schwesig, premier of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and senior member of the Social Democrats (SPD), who are about to form a government with the conservatives.
Under the new government, the authorities should review whether to ban the AfD, SPD leader Lars Klingbeil told Bild newspaper.
SPD's outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday called for a careful evaluation and warned against rushing to outlaw the party.
Created in 2013 to protest the euro zone bailouts, the eurosceptic AfD morphed into an anti-migration party after Germany's decision to take in a large wave of refugees in 2015.
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh, Friedrike Heine, Holger Hansen, Andreas Rinke, Matthias Williams and Rachel More in Berlin and Angelo Amante in Rome, Editing by Gareth Jones, Tomasz Janowski and Ros Russell)
Germany's intelligence service moves against far-right AfD, sets off quarrel with US
RFI
Sat, May 3, 2025
Une pancarte montrant la candidate de l'AfD à la chancellerie, Alice Weidel, à Oberreifenberg, en Hesse.
Germany's domestic intelligence service on Friday designated the far-right AfD party as an extremist group, setting off a diplomatic spat with the United States.
The BfV intelligence agency, which had already designated several local branches of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) as right-wing extremists, said it moved against the entire party due to its attempts to "undermine the free, democratic" order in Germany.
The classification gives authorities greater powers to monitor the party by lowering the barriers for such steps as intercepting telephone calls and deploying undercover agents.
The conservative US administration quickly condemned the move.
US Vice President JD Vance on Friday accused Germany of rebuilding a "Berlin Wall".
"The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt -- not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment," Vance, who in February defiantly met the AfD leader in Munich, wrote on X. He said the AfD was "the most popular party in Germany".
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it "tyranny in disguise" and said "Germany should reverse course". President Donald Trump's billionaire advisor Elon Musk has also previously defended the AfD.
The German foreign ministry took the unusual step of replying directly to Rubio on X to say: "This is democracy."
The ministry said that the "decision is the result of a thorough and independent investigation to protect our constitution" and could be appealed.
(With newswires)
Kate Connolly in Berlin
THE GUARDIAN
Fri, May 2, 2025
Fri, May 2, 2025
The AfD, Germany’s largest opposition party, is now classed ‘extremist’ by the country’s domestic spy agency.
Photograph: Craig Stennett/Getty Images
The decision by Germany’s domestic spy agency to call the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party “extremist” amounts to the starkest move yet by authorities to try to stop the advance of the populist political force.
Friday’s classification by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) will open up the possibility for the security services to monitor the country’s largest opposition party, including by recruiting people to inform against it and enabling interception of its communications.
AfD leaders denounced it as a “blow against democracy”, and nothing short of an attempt to disfranchise the more than 10 million people who voted for it in February’s election.
Its leaders vowed to take legal action against what they called “defamatory” and “politically motivated attacks”.
According to the experts who compiled the BfV’s 1,100-page report, the AfD is “a racist and anti-Muslim organisation”, which, through its strict, ethnically and ancestrally defined version of who is German and who is not, “deprecates whole sections of the population in Germany and infringes their human dignity”.
It has also “incited irrational fears and hostility” in society, steering the blame towards individuals and groups, the report said.
In itself, the step is not much of a surprise, although the timing is. The outgoing interior minister, Nancy Faeser, made the bombshell announcement on what is effectively her last day in office.
Faeser said “there was no political influence on the assessment”, despite the AfD’s insistence to the contrary. But the move puts the incoming conservative-led government of Friedrich Merz under great pressure, as well as Faeser’s Social Democrat colleagues, who will be the junior partners in the new coalition that gets to work next Tuesday.
On the back of the decision, Merz will now be responsible – on top of the myriad other challenges in his in-tray – for deciding whether and how to ban the AfD, a decision that will involve the most precarious of political tightrope walks.
Migration, Ukraine, Trump and an ailing economy are among the burgeoning issues that he will also have to tackle with urgency. The growing mood of dissatisfaction over these and other issues, exacerbated by the six months of political deadlock that followed the premature collapse of the previous government – which induced an added layer of nationwide ennui – has already caused the AfD to creep up in the polls.
Having won second place in February’s election – doubling its previous result and making it the strongest opposition party, second only to the conservative CDU/CSU – in recent days the AfD has come top of the polls for the first time ever.
The ruling by the BfV is unlikely to put people off supporting the AfD.
Finding a way to reduce the AfD has been at top of the agenda among all of the political parties since it emerged as a protest force of professors and academics in 2013 on the back of anger over the euro bailouts. The challenge has only grown in importance, as the populists – morphing from anti-euro to anti-migrant over time – have grown their success at the ballot box.
Merz would like to be seen as a pragmatic rationalist, aiming to reduce the AfD to what he refers to as the “marginal phenomenon” it once was by addressing the nation’s concerns, taking the wind out of the sails of the AfD’s successful modus operandi of inciting fear and insecurity.
Tackling “irregular” immigration is therefore at the top of his domestic agenda, as he seeks to address the topic viewed as having added the most fuel to the AfD’s fire.
But many others believe it is too late for that, arguing that an extremist classification, followed by a ban, would be the only way to stop the flourishing party.
Others say such a move would be in grave danger of backfiring, arguing that the AfD would turn such a branding by the state into its own “seal of approval”, which would serve to enhance its already strong sense of victimhood or martyrdom.
Merz’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, has been torn over how to deal with the AfD. Merz tacitly cooperated with the party earlier this year – despite insisting he would not – to push migration policies through parliament. And on the local level, his party and the AfD have cooperated on issues such as a ruling that the German flag should be hoisted in schools.
Jens Spahn, Merz’s close ally, recently prompted scorn by suggesting the AfD should be treated as a “normal opposition party”, arguing that excluding the party from parliamentary procedures only boosted its popularity.
Those who reject that approach say Friday’s ruling will now give them more justification to block the party at every opportunity – but they argue that this will only work if a cross-party consensus prevails
Rubio mocked for calling German policy ‘tyranny in disguise’ and backing extremist AfD party
The decision by Germany’s domestic spy agency to call the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party “extremist” amounts to the starkest move yet by authorities to try to stop the advance of the populist political force.
Friday’s classification by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) will open up the possibility for the security services to monitor the country’s largest opposition party, including by recruiting people to inform against it and enabling interception of its communications.
AfD leaders denounced it as a “blow against democracy”, and nothing short of an attempt to disfranchise the more than 10 million people who voted for it in February’s election.
Its leaders vowed to take legal action against what they called “defamatory” and “politically motivated attacks”.
According to the experts who compiled the BfV’s 1,100-page report, the AfD is “a racist and anti-Muslim organisation”, which, through its strict, ethnically and ancestrally defined version of who is German and who is not, “deprecates whole sections of the population in Germany and infringes their human dignity”.
It has also “incited irrational fears and hostility” in society, steering the blame towards individuals and groups, the report said.
In itself, the step is not much of a surprise, although the timing is. The outgoing interior minister, Nancy Faeser, made the bombshell announcement on what is effectively her last day in office.
Faeser said “there was no political influence on the assessment”, despite the AfD’s insistence to the contrary. But the move puts the incoming conservative-led government of Friedrich Merz under great pressure, as well as Faeser’s Social Democrat colleagues, who will be the junior partners in the new coalition that gets to work next Tuesday.
On the back of the decision, Merz will now be responsible – on top of the myriad other challenges in his in-tray – for deciding whether and how to ban the AfD, a decision that will involve the most precarious of political tightrope walks.
Migration, Ukraine, Trump and an ailing economy are among the burgeoning issues that he will also have to tackle with urgency. The growing mood of dissatisfaction over these and other issues, exacerbated by the six months of political deadlock that followed the premature collapse of the previous government – which induced an added layer of nationwide ennui – has already caused the AfD to creep up in the polls.
Having won second place in February’s election – doubling its previous result and making it the strongest opposition party, second only to the conservative CDU/CSU – in recent days the AfD has come top of the polls for the first time ever.
The ruling by the BfV is unlikely to put people off supporting the AfD.
Finding a way to reduce the AfD has been at top of the agenda among all of the political parties since it emerged as a protest force of professors and academics in 2013 on the back of anger over the euro bailouts. The challenge has only grown in importance, as the populists – morphing from anti-euro to anti-migrant over time – have grown their success at the ballot box.
Merz would like to be seen as a pragmatic rationalist, aiming to reduce the AfD to what he refers to as the “marginal phenomenon” it once was by addressing the nation’s concerns, taking the wind out of the sails of the AfD’s successful modus operandi of inciting fear and insecurity.
Tackling “irregular” immigration is therefore at the top of his domestic agenda, as he seeks to address the topic viewed as having added the most fuel to the AfD’s fire.
But many others believe it is too late for that, arguing that an extremist classification, followed by a ban, would be the only way to stop the flourishing party.
Others say such a move would be in grave danger of backfiring, arguing that the AfD would turn such a branding by the state into its own “seal of approval”, which would serve to enhance its already strong sense of victimhood or martyrdom.
Merz’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, has been torn over how to deal with the AfD. Merz tacitly cooperated with the party earlier this year – despite insisting he would not – to push migration policies through parliament. And on the local level, his party and the AfD have cooperated on issues such as a ruling that the German flag should be hoisted in schools.
Jens Spahn, Merz’s close ally, recently prompted scorn by suggesting the AfD should be treated as a “normal opposition party”, arguing that excluding the party from parliamentary procedures only boosted its popularity.
Those who reject that approach say Friday’s ruling will now give them more justification to block the party at every opportunity – but they argue that this will only work if a cross-party consensus prevails
Rubio mocked for calling German policy ‘tyranny in disguise’ and backing extremist AfD party
Gustaf Kilander
Fri, May 2, 2025
THE INDEPENDENT UK
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is facing criticism after slamming Germany for giving “its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition.”
Rubio lashed out on Friday following the decision by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency to classify the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a “proven right-wing extremist organization.”
“That’s not democracy—it’s tyranny in disguise,” the secretary wrote on X. “What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes. Germany should reverse course.”
Within hours, the German foreign office responded, writing on Elon Musk’s social media platform that “This is democracy. This decision is the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law.”
“It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped,” the office added.
“Nothing to see here—just the Secretary of State attacking one of our strongest allies, falsely accusing it of 'tyranny in disguise,' all in defense of a far-right, Holocaust-denying, pro-Putin party. This is INSANE,” the group Republicans against Trump wrote.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is facing criticism after slamming Germany for giving “its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition.”
Rubio lashed out on Friday following the decision by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency to classify the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a “proven right-wing extremist organization.”
“That’s not democracy—it’s tyranny in disguise,” the secretary wrote on X. “What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes. Germany should reverse course.”
Within hours, the German foreign office responded, writing on Elon Musk’s social media platform that “This is democracy. This decision is the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law.”
“It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped,” the office added.
“Nothing to see here—just the Secretary of State attacking one of our strongest allies, falsely accusing it of 'tyranny in disguise,' all in defense of a far-right, Holocaust-denying, pro-Putin party. This is INSANE,” the group Republicans against Trump wrote.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio slammed the German classification of the Alternative for Germany as an extremist organization (Getty Images)
Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German Ambassador to the United States between 2001 and 2006, asked: “You are aware a new German govt has been elected which will assume power next week, and which has already announced much tougher Immigration rules?”
The conservative Christian Democratic Party, which ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel formerly led, came out victorious in the February elections, and incoming Chancellor Friedrich Merz is set to form a government with the Social Democrats, having joined with other parties to commit to blocking the AfD from power.
The leaders of the AfD, which tops some polls, have trivialized the Holocaust, used Nazi slogans, and derided foreigners and immigrants.
The decision by the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution does give German authorities more power to conduct oversight and surveillance of the AfD. Previously, some state-level branches of the party have received the label, including in Saxony and Thuringia. However, this is the first time in modern German history that a political party represented across the country on the federal level has been classified as extremist, Politico noted.
In the February federal elections, the AfD won 152 of the 630 parliamentary seats and received 20.8 percent of the vote.
Following a three-year probe, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution published a 1,000-page report, pointing to breaches of constitutional principles such as human dignity and the rule of law.
President Donald Trump and his allies have mostly been backing the AfD, whose co-leader, Alice Weidel, was invited to attend Trump’s second inauguration. Meanwhile, Musk has continually supported the party, speaking at a campaign event for them in January of this year.
Alice Weidel was invited to attend Trump’s second inauguration (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
“Banning the centrist AfD, Germany’s most popular party, would be an extreme attack on democracy,” he wrote on X on Friday.
One AfD leader, Stephan Brandner, told the German news agency D.P.A., “This decision by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is complete nonsense in terms of substance, has nothing to do with law and justice, and is purely political in the fight between the cartel parties against the AfD.”
Rubio urges Germany to 'reverse course' after AfD labelled extremist
DPA
Fri, May 2, 2025
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends the American-Russian talks on Ukraine war in Diriyah Palace in Riyadh. Freddie Everett/US Department of State/dpa
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has condemned a classification of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as "confirmed right-wing extremist" by domestic intelligence, calling on the country to "reverse course."
"Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That's not democracy - it's tyranny in disguise," Rubio wrote on social media platform X.
"What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes," he said."Germany should reverse course."
Shifting targets, growing support: The rise of Germany's AfD
FILE PHOTO: Supporters of the AfD party wave flags during an event to rally support for Sunday's European Parliament elections in Berlin
By Thomas Escritt
Fri, May 2, 2025
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's domestic security agency classified the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as "extremist" on Friday, allowing for closer monitoring of the country's largest opposition party, which condemned the move as a "blow against democracy".
Here is a timeline for the AfD, Germany's most successful far-right party since World War Two.
2013
February 6 - Founded by right-wing economists, the party opposes Germany helping to bail out Greece at the height of the eurozone debt crisis, rejecting then-Chancellor Angela Merkel's assertion that there was "no alternative".
Headed by Bernd Lucke and Frauke Petry, the party grows quickly, fuelled by ample donations from small businesses and attracting disillusioned conservative and neoliberal politicians and voters.
September 22 - It narrowly misses the 5% threshold for winning seats in that year's parliamentary election
2014
May 25 - The party wins 7% in European Parliament elections, allowing it to send seven members to Brussels.
Though nativist overtones are never far from the surface, the party denies any racist motivation for its opposition to bailing out Greece and other heavily indebted countries.
August - A string of regional election victories in eastern Germany fuels the AfD's move further to the right, and Bjoern Hoecke, the party's nativist leader in the state of Thuringia, becomes one its most emblematic figures.
2015
The refugee crisis sees more than one million, mostly Muslim migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa arrive in Germany, propelling the AfD's nativist wing to the fore and giving the party a toehold in western Germany.
2016
March 13 - The AfD scores double-digit results in west German regional elections for the first time and wins nearly a quarter of the vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt - at the time the best result ever for a far-right party.
2017
January - Hoecke achieves notoriety for describing Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame". A court overrules Petry's attempts to kick him out of the party the following year.
January 21 - The party's growing prominence is signalled by its presence at an international gathering of far-right politicians in Koblenz, where Petry rubs shoulders with France's Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands' Geert Wilders.
September - Petry is ousted, in a defeat for the economic libertarian wing of the party, and is replaced by Alice Weidel, who leads the party to this day, and Alexander Gauland, a right-wing former Christian Democrat.
September 24 - The party wins 12.6% in Germany's federal election, entering the national parliament for the first time and becoming the largest opposition party.
2019
January 15 - The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) places the AfD under examination, and labels The Wing - a nativist grouping within the party led by Hoecke - and the party's youth wings as suspected far-right cases.
2020
April 30 - The Wing is dissolved.
2021
January 20 - The AfD mounts a legal challenge against being classified as a suspect far-right case.
February 25 - The BfV confirms the party is suspected far-right.
September 26 - Partly as a result of growing concerns about the cluster of far-right figures at the top of the party, and partly thanks to a buoyant economy, the party falls to 10.3% in the parliamentary election.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the slowing economy subsequently give the party a boost, and it also benefits from infighting in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's unwieldy three-way coalition.
Leaning heavily into culture war issues with demands for enquiries into alleged mishandling of the pandemic, critiques of modern architecture or rejection of supposed "gender ideologies", the party is able to secure and expand its base.
2022
April 5 - The party's youth wing is declared officially right extremist.
2024
January - A series of scandals - a bombshell report that senior figures had discussed deporting citizens of non-German ethnicity, the discovery of an alleged Chinese spy in one politician's office, and allegations that another had taken money from pro-Russian propaganda outlets - sparks months of protests but fails to sustainably dent support.
Increasingly, the party relies on a strategy of attempting to gum up government, peppering courts and ministries with filings and questions that critics regard as frivolous, in a way that seems designed to slow and discredit the state.
Hoecke is the leading champion of this strategy, deploying slogans that resemble those used by Adolf Hitler's Nazis in a manner guaranteed to command attention.
May 13 - A court rules that the classification as suspected far-right - one step short of Friday's confirmed far-right classification - is justified. The party had called members from ethnic minorities to testify that it was not.
May 22 - Le Pen distances herself from the AfD after Maximilian Krah, one of its most popular figures, fails to condemn Hitler's paramiltary SS in a newspaper interview.
2024
September 1 - The party becomes the first far-right party to top a regional election since World War Two.
2025
January - Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, interviews AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, declaring weeks ahead of a federal election: "Only the AfD can save Germany."
February 23 - The AfD comes second in the federal election, the best result for a far-right party since the German Federal Republic's founding.
March 31 - The party's youth wing is dissolved to make way for a replacement under closer supervision of party headquarters.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Gareth Jones)
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's domestic security agency classified the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as "extremist" on Friday, allowing for closer monitoring of the country's largest opposition party, which condemned the move as a "blow against democracy".
Here is a timeline for the AfD, Germany's most successful far-right party since World War Two.
2013
February 6 - Founded by right-wing economists, the party opposes Germany helping to bail out Greece at the height of the eurozone debt crisis, rejecting then-Chancellor Angela Merkel's assertion that there was "no alternative".
Headed by Bernd Lucke and Frauke Petry, the party grows quickly, fuelled by ample donations from small businesses and attracting disillusioned conservative and neoliberal politicians and voters.
September 22 - It narrowly misses the 5% threshold for winning seats in that year's parliamentary election
2014
May 25 - The party wins 7% in European Parliament elections, allowing it to send seven members to Brussels.
Though nativist overtones are never far from the surface, the party denies any racist motivation for its opposition to bailing out Greece and other heavily indebted countries.
August - A string of regional election victories in eastern Germany fuels the AfD's move further to the right, and Bjoern Hoecke, the party's nativist leader in the state of Thuringia, becomes one its most emblematic figures.
2015
The refugee crisis sees more than one million, mostly Muslim migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa arrive in Germany, propelling the AfD's nativist wing to the fore and giving the party a toehold in western Germany.
2016
March 13 - The AfD scores double-digit results in west German regional elections for the first time and wins nearly a quarter of the vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt - at the time the best result ever for a far-right party.
2017
January - Hoecke achieves notoriety for describing Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame". A court overrules Petry's attempts to kick him out of the party the following year.
January 21 - The party's growing prominence is signalled by its presence at an international gathering of far-right politicians in Koblenz, where Petry rubs shoulders with France's Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands' Geert Wilders.
September - Petry is ousted, in a defeat for the economic libertarian wing of the party, and is replaced by Alice Weidel, who leads the party to this day, and Alexander Gauland, a right-wing former Christian Democrat.
September 24 - The party wins 12.6% in Germany's federal election, entering the national parliament for the first time and becoming the largest opposition party.
2019
January 15 - The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) places the AfD under examination, and labels The Wing - a nativist grouping within the party led by Hoecke - and the party's youth wings as suspected far-right cases.
2020
April 30 - The Wing is dissolved.
2021
January 20 - The AfD mounts a legal challenge against being classified as a suspect far-right case.
February 25 - The BfV confirms the party is suspected far-right.
September 26 - Partly as a result of growing concerns about the cluster of far-right figures at the top of the party, and partly thanks to a buoyant economy, the party falls to 10.3% in the parliamentary election.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the slowing economy subsequently give the party a boost, and it also benefits from infighting in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's unwieldy three-way coalition.
Leaning heavily into culture war issues with demands for enquiries into alleged mishandling of the pandemic, critiques of modern architecture or rejection of supposed "gender ideologies", the party is able to secure and expand its base.
2022
April 5 - The party's youth wing is declared officially right extremist.
2024
January - A series of scandals - a bombshell report that senior figures had discussed deporting citizens of non-German ethnicity, the discovery of an alleged Chinese spy in one politician's office, and allegations that another had taken money from pro-Russian propaganda outlets - sparks months of protests but fails to sustainably dent support.
Increasingly, the party relies on a strategy of attempting to gum up government, peppering courts and ministries with filings and questions that critics regard as frivolous, in a way that seems designed to slow and discredit the state.
Hoecke is the leading champion of this strategy, deploying slogans that resemble those used by Adolf Hitler's Nazis in a manner guaranteed to command attention.
May 13 - A court rules that the classification as suspected far-right - one step short of Friday's confirmed far-right classification - is justified. The party had called members from ethnic minorities to testify that it was not.
May 22 - Le Pen distances herself from the AfD after Maximilian Krah, one of its most popular figures, fails to condemn Hitler's paramiltary SS in a newspaper interview.
2024
September 1 - The party becomes the first far-right party to top a regional election since World War Two.
2025
January - Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, interviews AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, declaring weeks ahead of a federal election: "Only the AfD can save Germany."
February 23 - The AfD comes second in the federal election, the best result for a far-right party since the German Federal Republic's founding.
March 31 - The party's youth wing is dissolved to make way for a replacement under closer supervision of party headquarters.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Germany's domestic intelligence agency on Friday designated the anti-immigration AfD as a confirmed "right-wing extremist" organization that "disregards human dignity" and threatens democracy.
The new classification, which gives the agency broader surveillance power over the AfD, is the result of a comprehensive review, the findings of which are laid out in a 1,100-page internal report.
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