This was said by a ministry spokeswoman for the German Press Agency in Berlin. “Bild” had previously reported on it.

More than 1,000 pages

In May last year, shortly before the change of government and under the then Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), the Office for the Protection of the Constitution announced that the evidence of anti-constitutional efforts had “consolidated into certainty” and that the AfD would from now on be classified as a “certain right-wing extremist effort.”

The basis for this was a new report from the domestic secret service that was more than 1,100 pages long and listed statements and activities by AfD politicians as evidence for such a classification.

First of all, no “technical examination”

The Cologne Administrative Court decided in an urgent procedure on Thursday that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is not allowed to classify and describe the AfD as definitely right-wing extremist for the time being. A decision on the main issue is still pending.

The spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior explained that the report was received from Faeser in April last year. “A technical examination did not take place at this point.” In the course of dealing with the decision of the Cologne Administrative Court, “an in-depth examination of the report” will now be carried out.

What the court complains about

According to the court, there is sufficient certainty that efforts directed against the free democratic basic order are being developed within the AfD. However, this “does not shape it in a way that leads to a basic anti-constitutional tendency being identified in its overall picture.”

In its report, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution came to the conclusion that there was a predominant “ethnic-descent” understanding of the people in the party that devalued entire population groups in Germany and violated their human dignity.