The debate over banning Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained new momentum this week when Society for Civil Rights (GFF) A legal assessment was presented which concluded that the party was “patently unconstitutional” and that attempts to ban it could succeed.
The GFF was originally founded by a Green Party politician, who still serves as its Secretary General, but the board is composed 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 “investigate the AfD according to academic standards”. The researchers said the report represents “the first comprehensive assessment on the unconstitutionality of the AfD” that “will significantly improve the basis for discussion on the 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 a 29% vote share nationwide in some elections.
Can any political party be banned?
A ban would only be possible if a motion were filed with the Federal Constitutional Court, and only three constitutional bodies have the power to do so: the federal government or one of the two houses of Germany’s parliament: the Bundestag or the Bundesrat.
There appears to be no political appetite for a ban at this time: the last time the Bundestag addressed the issue, in January 2025, only 124 out of 733 members were in favor of imposing a ban. Many members of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) were opposed to the imposition of the ban.
Rolf Frankenberger, director of the Institute for Right-Wing Extremism Research at the University of Tübingen, said the GFF report was an important contribution to the debate. “From a social science perspective, this provides ample evidence of the ideologies driving the AfD and that these are inconsistent with the Basic Law,” he told DW.
But Frankenberger acknowledged that political conditions are not favorable for a ban. “At the moment, it does not seem realistic that there will be sanctions proceedings, especially since the CDU/CSU is so opposed to it,” he said. “It is mainly up to the CDU/CSU, but also parts of the SPD, to drop their resistance to the long-overdue ban.”
For her part, AfD co-leader Alice Weidel rejected the report, emphasizing the fact that the AI system Cloud Opus was used to analyze the statements of some AfD officials (although the report also said that the AI analysis was checked by a human).
“As suspected, the NGO’s ‘report’ was generated using AI, and the allegations are completely fabricated,” Weidel wrote on X.
AfD ‘opposes the principle of democracy’
“The AfD opposes the principle of democracy by trying to suppress its political opponents. And it opposes human dignity because its racist political concept, like that of the NPD, sets up different classes of people,” said project leader Bijan Moini, presenting the GFF report in Berlin on Thursday.
But the NPD is probably 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 action to ban the AfD can succeed.
Moini points to three defining characteristics of a free democratic system: human dignity, democracy, and the rule of law. He said, “The Federal Constitutional Court has made it clear: if a party opposes one of these features, it opposes the free democratic basic system as a whole.”
How does the AfD define who is German?
Moini is confident that the AFD meets these criteria. For one thing, Mooney says the party’s public statements reveal it has a racist view of who is a German citizen, which in itself could be considered unconstitutional. “What is decisive, however, is not that the AfD is shaped by such a conception of the people, but that it intends to put it into practice,” Moini said.
Similarly, Moini argues that the AfD’s threats to prosecute ruling politicians amount to an attack on democratic processes: “It demands prison sentences for decisions it does not agree with politically,” he said. “The breeding ground for these demands is an ideology that views political opponents not as equal partners in democratic competition, but as traitors to the people.”
The GFF report provides several examples of this, citing Weidel’s promise in 2019 that she would “personally ensure that Angela Merkel ultimately gets to court.” In 2022, Stephan Brandner, one of the AfD’s leading Bundestag members, said that one day, “a powerful justice minister and a powerful prosecutor” will confront both Merkel and her successor Olaf Scholz.
Moini believes that such statements are enough to demonstrate the AfD’s alleged unconstitutionality, as “the basis of these demands are not potential criminal offenses, but democratically legitimate decisions regarding migration policy, the COVID-19 pandemic… nuclear phase-out and Ukraine policy.”
Support from civil society and other politicians
The ‘Ban the AfD Now’ campaign, launched in June 2024, sees the report as promoting its cause. “We now have it in black and white: the AfD must be banned because – on legal grounds – it is unconstitutional,” campaign spokesman Felix Joachim told DW. “Politicians have no excuse anymore.”
Amadeu Antonio FoundationAn anti-racism NGO named after a man murdered by neo-Nazis in the 1990s also supports the ban: “The AfD is the biggest threat to our democratic co-existence,” said chairman Timo Renfrank.
“The deadly poison of right-wing extremism has already spread across large sections of our society, threatening our co-existence and on the verge of taking over power in some federal states,” he said.
Many politicians have used the GFF report to make similar calls. Cem Ozdemir, the newly elected state premier of Baden-Wurttemberg of the Green Party, wrote on X that “the GFF’s expert opinion strongly confirms: the AfD is a dangerous party.”
Frankenberger argued that, at the very least, an effort to ban the party would bring legal clarity. “This must be followed by a broader social discussion on democracy and human rights,” he said.
Edited by Reena Goldenberg