German lawyers: Ban on far-right AfD 'likely successful'

The debate over banning Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained new impetus this week when the Society for Civil Rights (GFF) presented a legal assessment which concluded that the party was "demonstrably unconstitutional" and that an attempt to ban it could be successful. 

The GFF was originally founded by a Green Party politician, who still serves as its Secretary General, but the board is made up of lawyers and law professors.The NGO's team of legal experts and researchers said they spent a year combing through 77,000 parliamentary documents, 55,000 press releases and 2.9 million social media posts to "examine the AfD according to academic standards." The researchers said that the report represented "the first comprehensive assessment on the unconstitutionality of the AfD" that would "significantly improve the basis for a discussion on a ban."

However, any attempt to ban the party is likely to be politically explosive, not least because the AfD is currently the most popular political party in Germany, with up to 29% vote share nationwide in some polls.

Can a political party be banned?

A ban would only be possible if a motion is filed to the Federal Constitutional Court, and only three constitutional bodies have the power to do that: The federal government or either of the two chambers of Germany's parliament: The Bundestag or the Bundesrat. 

There doesn't seem to be the political appetite for a ban at the moment: The last time the Bundestag addressed the issue, in January 2025, only 124 out of 733 members were in favor of calling for a ban. The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and many members of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) were opposed to pursuing a ban.

Rolf Frankenberger, director of the Institute for Right-Wing Extremism Research at Tübingen University, said that the GFF report was an important contribution to the debate. "From a social science perspective, this provides more than sufficient evidence of the ideologies driving the AfD and that these are incompatible with the Basic Law," he told DW. 

But Frankenberger admitted that the political circumstances are not conducive to a ban. "At the moment, it does not seem realistic that a ban proceeding will take place, as the CDU/CSU in particular is opposed to it," he said. "It is primarily up to the CDU/CSU, but also to parts of the SPD, to abandon their resistance to a long-overdue ban."

For her part, AfD co-leader Alice Weidel dismissed the report, pouncing on the fact that the AI system Claude Opus had been used to analyze some AfD officials' statements (though the report also said that the AI analyses had been checked by a human).

"As suspected, the NGO's 'report' was generated using AI, and the allegations are completely far-fetched," Weidel wrote on X. "It's a joke like no other. Instead of pursuing sound policies, the other parties are taking potshots at us in a scandalously amateurish manner."

AfD 'opposes the principle of democracy'

Presenting the GFF report in Berlin on Thursday, project leader Bijan Moini, said, "the AfD opposes the principle of democracy by seeking to suppress its political opponents. And it opposes human dignity because its racially charged political concept, much like that of the NPD, establishes different classes of people."

But the NPD is perhaps not the best example to use: Two attempts to ban the National Democratic Party of Germany, which harbors many outright neo-Nazis, have already failed — most recently in 2017. 

Nevertheless, the GFF is confident that proceedings to ban the AfD could be successful.

Moini points to the three defining characteristics of the free democratic order: Human dignity, democracy, and the rule of law. "The Federal Constitutional Court has made it clear: If a party opposes one of these features, it opposes the free democratic basic order as a whole," he said.

How the AfD defines who is German

Moini is convinced that the AfD fulfills these criteria. For one thing, Moini says the party's public statements show that it has a racist view of who constitutes a German citizen, which on its own could be deemed unconstitutional. "What is decisive, however, is not that the AfD is shaped by such a concept of the people, but that it intends to put it into practice," Moini said. 

By a similar token, Moini argues that the AfD's threats to prosecute governing politicians amount to an attack on democratic processes: "It calls … for prison sentences for decisions that it does not agree with politically," he said. "The breeding ground for these demands is an ideology that views political opponents not as equal participants in democratic competition, but as traitors to the people."

The GFF report provides numerous examples of this, citing Weidel's promise in 2019 that she would "personally ensure that Angela Merkel ultimately ends up in court." In 2022, Stephan Brandner, one of the AfD's more prominent Bundestag members, said that one day, "a feisty justice minister and a feisty prosecutor" would take on both Merkel and her successor Olaf Scholz.

Moini believes statements like these are enough to demonstrate the AfD's alleged unconstitutionality, because "the basis for these demands is not potential criminal offenses, but democratically legitimate decisions regarding migration policy, the COVID-19 pandemic … the nuclear phase-out, and Ukraine policy."

Support from civil society and other politicians

The 'Ban the AfD Now' campaign, launched in June 2024, views the report as a boost to its cause. "Now we have it in black and white: The AfD must be banned because — on legal grounds — it is unconstitutional," campaign spokesperson Felix Jochim told DW. "Politicians have no more excuses." 

The Amadeu Antonio Foundation, an anti-racist NGO named after a man murdered by neo-Nazis in the 1990s, also supports a ban: "The AfD is the greatest threat to our democratic coexistence," chairman Timo Reinfrank said. 

"The deadly poison of right-wing extremism has already permeated large parts of our society, threatens our coexistence, and is on the verge of taking power in some federal states," he added, referring to the fact that the AfD may win state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in September. 

Several politicians have used the GFF report to make a similar calls. Baden-Württemberg's newly-elected State Premier Cem Özdemir, of the Green Party, wrote on X that "the GFF's expert opinion confirms emphatically: The AfD is a dangerous party."

Frankenberger argued that, at the very least, an attempt to ban the party would bring legal clarity. "This would then definitely have to be accompanied by a comprehensive societal discussion on democracy and human rights," he said.

Edited by Rina Goldenberg