AfD hails court injunction on 'extremist' label as victory

A German court has issued a temporary injunction stopping the country's domestic intelligence service from referring to the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party as a "right-wing extremist" group.

The far-right party had challenged the classification announced by German intelligence last May, and the court in Cologne issued an injunction on the use of the term until it has issued a ruling over it.

The party's co-leader Alice Weidel said the verdict was "a major victory not only for the AfD but also for democracy and the rule of law".

The AfD came second in federal elections in Germany last year, winning a record 152 seats in the 630-seat parliament with 20.8% of the vote.

In its decision last May, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), concluded that "the ethnicity- and ancestry-based understanding of the people prevailing within the party is incompatible with the free democratic order".

A designation as an extremist group gives authorities greater surveillance powers and, in fact, the AfD had already been placed under observation for suspected extremism in Germany. The intelligence agency had also classed it as right-wing extremist in three states in the east, where its popularity is highest.

The AfD challenged the label in Cologne - where the BfV is based - which is why Thursday's decision was issued by the city's administrative court.

It did not say when its final ruling would be issued.

As part of its role in ensuring Germany's "free democratic basic order", the domestic intelligence agency is responsible for both counter-intelligence and investigating terror threats.

Under Germany's Basic Law - a constitution adopted in 1949 four years after the fall of Hitler's Nazi regime - parties that "deliberately undermine the functioning of Germany's free democratic basic order" can be banned if they act in a "militant and aggressive way" - and some German politicians have called for an outright ban of the AfD.

Germany's Constitutional Court has banned only two parties since the end of World War Two, both in the 1950s.