May 2 (UPI) -- Germany's populist, far-right Alternative for Germany party was officially designated Friday as an "extremist" group that is actively working to undermine the country's democracy.
Domestic intelligence agency the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution said it had taken the step based on hard evidence detailed in a 1,000-page it said provided evidence that AfD was working against the country's democratic system.
"The ethnicity and ancestry-based understanding of the people prevailing within the party is incompatible with the free democratic order," the FOPC said in a statement.
The "proven far-right extremist organization" classification was in line with what the report said are breaches of central tenets of the constitution, including with regard to human dignity and the rule of law, but stops short of banning AfD.
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However, the designation empowers authorities, subject to approval by a judge, to intensify surveillance, including infiltration by undercover agents, wire-tapping and tracking of online activity and communications.
AfD co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla condemned the decision, saying in a post on X that the real threat to democracy was the FOPC, which it said was trying to game the system ahead of Friedrich Merz's coalition government coming into office on Tuesday.
"Today's decision by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is a severe blow to German democracy: In current polls, the AfD is the strongest party. The federal government only has four days left in office, and the secret service no longer even has a president. And the classification as a so-called 'suspected case' is not yet legally binding," they said.
"Nevertheless, the AfD, as an opposition party, is now being publicly discredited and criminalized shortly before the change of government. The associated, targeted interference in the democratic decision-making process is therefore clearly politically motivated. The AfD will continue to defend itself legally against these defamations that endanger democracy."
The ruling marks the first time such a large party -- the AfD is the second largest party behind the CDU with 152 of the 630 seats in the Bundestag -- has been officially determined to be extremist since the end of the World War II.
A legal ban is seen as unlikely, as it would need to be endorsed by the Federal Constitutional Court and the Bundestag, the federal legislature, but the extremist tag could drastically escalate the onus on mainstream parties to pledge they will not work with the AfD under any circumstances.
The anti-immigration AfD has come from nowhere to make major electoral gains in recent months with big wins in the former East German states of Thuringia and Saxony in regional elections in September, and picked up scores of seats in February's national election, denying either of the centrist parties -- the CDU and SPD -- of a majority.
