The German intelligence agency has opened an investigation into the far-right Alternative for Germany as a potential threat to the constitutional order, officials said on Wednesday, an unprecedented move at the start of an election year decisive for the country.
The decision marks the latest escalation in the scrutiny of Germany’s largest opposition parliamentary party, whose popularity rose in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis. The party’s electoral fortunes, known as the AfD , have declined after a series of scandals, but remain popular in some parts of the country.
Germany faces several major votes this year, with six states at the polls ahead of the September federal election that will conclude Angela Merkel’s 16-year reign as chancellor.
Representatives of other political parties, including the Conservative bloc of Ms. Merkel, they welcomed the decision.
“Far-right extremists have taken over the AfD …[The party] it does not belong to parliaments, ”said Markus Blume, the general secretary of the Bavarian sister party of Mrs Merkel’s Conservatives.
Germany’s national intelligence service, the BfV, controls extremist groups and criminal organizations in the country.
His research on a political group elected to the federal parliament is unprecedented in the country’s contemporary history. This investigation would normally involve electronic surveillance and other forms of wiretapping, but the agency agreed to limit the collection of information on elected officials after the AfD filed a lawsuit against its investigation.
Alice Weidel, AfD co-chair and party leader in the federal parliament, said the investigation was designed to damage the party before the national elections.
“Of course, we will take legal action against the unjustified outlawing of the AfD,” Ms Weidel said on Twitter.
An agency spokesman declined to comment due to pending court proceedings.
The AfD, which sits in the parliaments of the 16 German states as well as in the federal assembly, was founded in 2013 by fiscal conservatives disillusioned with the country’s economic policy, but became an anti-immigration party. and anti-Islam. Its popularity increased after the entry of nearly two million asylum seekers into the country in 2015 and 2016.
The party garnered 12.6% of the vote in the last federal election in 2017, but controversy over extremist statements and corruption scandals has marked its popularity ever since.
Opinion polls show that the AfD is popular in the former communist east of the country and among members of the police and armed forces.
Parties and individual members have been subjected to legal scrutiny for their radical rhetoric, including anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic statements, and some individuals or party groups have been investigated by BfV for months.
Write to Bojan Pancevski to [email protected]
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