According to SPIEGEL information, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has declared the entire AfD to be suspected right-wing extremism.
This enables the authority to monitor the party using intelligence services.
However, in an ongoing legal dispute before the administrative court, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has committed itself to for the time being refrain from surveillance by the secret service of members of the federal, state and European Parliament.
The same goes for candidates in the upcoming elections in 2021.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) is also currently not allowed to announce the classification as a “suspected case”.
In response to a request from SPIEGEL, the authority did not want to confirm the move.
"With a view to the ongoing proceedings and out of respect for the court, the BfV is not making a public statement on this matter," said a spokeswoman.
The basis for the observation of the entire AfD is a 1000-page report by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
To this end, the office's lawyers and right-wing extremism experts have been collecting a lot of evidence of alleged violations of the free democratic basic order since the beginning of 2019.
Most recently, the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the office, leaned over the report.
Such a step must be absolutely legally secure, was the stipulation of Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU).
Violation of the guarantee of human dignity and the principle of democracy?
According to SPIEGEL information, the report should provide evidence that the AfD violates the guarantee of human dignity and the principle of democracy in the Basic Law.
Several hundred speeches and statements by functionaries at all party levels are to serve as evidence.
From the point of view of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a weighty reason for the classification is apparently the influence of the Volkish "wing" on the party.
Authority chief Thomas Haldenwang had already reported at the interior ministers' conference in December that the right-wing extremist movement around Björn Höcke had gained in importance.
This was also shown at the last AfD federal party conference, where the right wing camp had almost half of the delegates behind them.
There are also connections to right-wing extremist organizations such as the »Identitarian Movement«, »One Percent«, the magazine »Compact« and the new right-wing think tank »Institute for State Policy« led by Götz Kubitschek.
The AfD is already under surveillance in several federal states: in Brandenburg, Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony.
The AfD had recently tried to prevent a nationwide classification as a "suspected case" by the constitution protection with lawsuits.
The party sees its equal opportunities violated in political competition.
For the time being, the administrative courts did not want to deny the office an observation in principle.
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