Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is a “Right-wing extremist” party, the country’s domestic intelligence service announced on Friday. This classification has few immediate legal consequences, but it carries enormous potential to backfire politically just as a new government sets out to win back public trust.

The decision to upgrade the AfD from its previous categorisation as a “suspected Right-wing extremist” party to a “confirmed” one has not come out of the blue. Reports indicated that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV, by its German acronym) had planned to do this a few months ago but was deterred when a snap election was scheduled for February. It didn’t want to be seen to interfere with the voting.

Nonetheless, the news has fired up political debate in Berlin. Special live coverage ran on several media outlets, and politicians from all the major parties commented. The AfD called the classification “total nonsense” and “purely political”. The Greens said it confirmed that the AfD was “on the warpath against the liberal democratic order”. For the General Secretary of the centre-left SPD, Matthias Miersch, it showed that “what sounds like racism, what looks like racism, is in the end racism.”

These responses were as predictable as the BfV’s decision. The growing popularity of the AfD, which came second in February’s election and is now in first place in some polls, has long been watched with concern by the established parties, which don’t know what to do about it. As a result, they have focused on combatting the AfD itself rather than the issues underpinning its rise. Systematic exclusion of the AfD from certain parliamentary processes and offices, large street demonstrations against “the Right”, and calls for an AfD ban acted like paracetamol against a headache that refuses to go away.

So it’s hardly surprising that the new AfD classification is welcomed by those who feel helpless in tackling the party’s rise. What’s harder to predict is what will happen next. As a “suspected” case of extremism, the AfD was already under surveillance from the BfV, which is allowed to use methods including technological surveillance and undercover agents. These methods have to be proportional by law and that proportionality shifts with the upgraded categorisation, making it easier for the intelligence agency to go further.

The bigger consequences will be political. Those who have demanded excluding the AfD in the past feel emboldened even though, legally speaking, the BfV classification isn’t necessary for a ban. The process is entirely political, triggered either by the government or by one of the two chambers of parliament. The last time MPs tried this in the lower chamber, the Bundestag, only 124 of 735 deputies supported it and the matter was dropped.

That was in February. Due to the BfV ruling, people like SPD politician Georg Maier want to try again. “The evidence is overwhelming,” Maier said on Friday. “Now the time is ripe for a banning application.” Similar calls were made by figures across the political spectrum. The timing of the BfV announcement means that the launch of Germany’s new government next week may be overshadowed by the debate over whether to ban the largest opposition party, rather than feeling like a fresh start.

It also changes the dynamics of the coalition led by Friedrich Merz’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union, which won the election but can only reach a majority with SPD help since it has ruled out cooperating with the AfD. In the run-up to the election, Merz passed a motion to tighten immigration legislation with votes from the AfD, which caused much furore but reinforced a feeling that the SPD might not hold all the levers. With the AfD now officially labelled “Right-wing extremist”, the conservatives might feel the party is entirely untouchable.

The Greens alluded to this on Friday, arguing that the BfV decision was “a clear message in the direction of those who recently argued for a normalisation of the party”. This leaves Merz at the mercy of the SPD, potentially making the change he promised more difficult to enact in critical areas such as the economy and immigration.

Whatever happens next, it has already become harder for the two ruling parties to launch their newly elected government on a constructive and positive note next week. If anything, this is likely to give more, not less, political oxygen to the AfD.

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Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and writer. She is the author, most recently, of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.

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