The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party organization in the southern German state of Bavaria may be under surveillance as a suspected extremist organization, a court in Munich ruled on Monday.
The decision, which dismissed a lawsuit by the Bavarian AfD, clears the way for the deployment of undercover agents and the interception of communications to keep an eye on the group.
Two lower courts had previously made similar rulings.
At the start of the hearing, Bavarian state chairman of the AfD Stephan Protschka said he did not expect the complaint to be successful and announced that the party would continue with further appeals.
AfD party organizations are under similar scrutiny as suspected or known far-right extremists in a number of German states. This also applies to some groups affiliated with the party at a national level, including the youth wing of the AfD.
The Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a state-level intelligence agency that monitors potential threats to German democratic values and institutions, announced in 2022 that it would begin monitoring the AfD party at the state level.
The intelligence community pledged in the announcement to release public reports on its findings, but the agency said it has refrained from using undercover agents or wiretaps until a final judicial ruling on the matter is made.
The court ruled that thousands of pages of evidence collected by the agency from publicly available sources – including chat transcripts and excerpts of speeches – prove that the AfD adheres to the constitution and that observations are justified.
The spectrum ranges from anti-foreign and anti-Muslim statements to anti-democratic statements by AfD members and party officials, the court said on Monday.
