Germany worried over far-right AfD’s more radical course

BERLIN

Germany’s nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is hardening its far-right course, the country’s domestic intelligence agency warned on Monday.

Thomas Haldenwang, the chief of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), told media that the latest party gathering of the AfD, where delegates elected controversial candidates for next year’s European Parliament election, has been a worrying development.

“This proves once again our assessment that there are strong anti-constitutional currents within the party whose influence continues to grow,” Haldenwang told the German news agency DPA, adding that moderates have lost their influence.

“The complete list of candidates and the party’s program for the European Parliament elections have not yet been finalized. But it is already clear that people who have attracted attention in the past with positions that are not compatible with our free, democratic constitutional order, will be part of the AfD group in the upcoming European Parliament,” he said.

On Saturday, right-wing politician Maximilian Krah was elected as the AfD’s lead candidate in the 2024 European elections, winning support from more than 65 of the party delegates.

He has been a close ally of Bjorn Hocke, the leading figure of the AfD’s extremist wing, which was put under surveillance by the domestic intelligence agency in 2019 for its anti-democratic tendencies.

The anti-immigrant AfD is currently polling around 20%, ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (18%), and their coalition partners the Greens (16%), and the liberal Free Democrats (6%).