Berlin, June 26th, 2026 (The Berlin Spectator) – A group of eight legal scholars and policy experts has concluded that a formal application to ban the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party stands a good chance of succeeding before Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court.
The assessment, commissioned by the civil liberties organization Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF) and funded through private donations, is based on an extensive analysis of the AfD’s party platform, electoral programs, parliamentary motions, and public statements by party officials, according to German-language media reports.
The experts argue that the AfD’s conduct constitutes violations of both the democratic principle and the constitutional guarantee of human dignity, which are the two central legal benchmarks in German party ban proceedings.
No Moderates Left
One of the report’s most striking findings is that internal checks on radical elements within the party have effectively disappeared. According to the document, no faction within the AfD currently takes a sustained public stand against its most extreme voices. While the party does expel members on occasion, those actions are notably not directed at figures who have distinguished themselves through openly anti-constitutional positions. The report specifically names party leader Alice Weidel, European Parliament member Maximilian Krah, and Hans-Thomas Tillschneider from Saxony-Anhalt in this context.
The experts also take aim at the party’s so-called incompatibility list — a register of extremist organizations whose members are formally barred from AfD membership. Rather than serving as a genuine firewall, the report concludes, party leadership deliberately distinguishes between formal membership and political collaboration, effectively enabling ties with the far-right fringe while maintaining a veneer of distance.
The report further finds that the AfD’s policy agenda is systematically directed at the exclusion, denigration, and legal marginalization of foreigners, Germans with immigrant backgrounds, Muslims, and other groups.
The Berlin Spectator does have a newsletter. Subscribe to it here.
Divided Political Landscape
Under German law, only the Bundestag, the Bundesrat, or the federal government may apply to the Constitutional Court for a party ban — and there is no consensus among the major parties on whether to pursue one. A Cologne administrative court ruled in February that there was sufficient evidence of anti-constitutional activity within the AfD, but stopped short of finding that the party as a whole was defined by an anti-constitutional character.
A ruling in the main proceedings is still pending. The AfD is currently classified as a suspected extremist organization by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, and is challenging that designation in court.
The Green Party’s co-parliamentary leaders, Britta Haßelmann and Katharina Dröge, used the report’s publication to renew their call for cross-party talks on a ban application. In a letter to the parliamentary leaders of the conservative CDU/CSU, the center-left SPD and the far-left Die Linke, they wrote that they were convinced that no further warnings were needed and that the defense of democracy could not be delayed.
