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The AfD has named December as its target for taking office in Saxony-Anhalt. Its opponents are assembling a legal case, judges are arguing over prosecutorial powers, and Brussels is reviewing its European party’s registration. Germany’s political firewall now faces two tests: whether it can keep the AfD out, and what happens if it cannot.
December Will Test the Firewall
Ulrich Siegmund has given Germany’s political firewall a date with reality. On September 29, the AfD’s leading candidate in Saxony-Anhalt announced that he would seek election as state premier in December. His party is three votes short of an outright majority. Those votes, not another opinion poll, are now the prize.
Ulrich Siegmund announces his December bid to become premier of Saxony-Anhalt. The AfD has
a timetable for taking office, but not yet the votes to get there
Before the election, Siegmund said he would govern only if the AfD won an absolute majority. It did not, but he now intends to seek the premiership anyway. His possible opening is the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, BSW. It refuses to join an AfD coalition but is discussing policy conditions with the party and says it will abstain when parliament elects the premier.
That abstention alone would not elect Siegmund. The AfD holds 39 seats. The CDU, SPD, Greens, and Left together also hold 39. If those four parties all vote against him, the result would remain tied even in the third round, when abstentions are excluded. He therefore needs at least one of their deputies to vote for him or abstain.
His opponents also struggle to assemble a majority. The SPD, Greens, Left, and BSW have discussed backing an independent premier, but they need CDU support. The CDU declined the invitation and says it intends to remain in opposition. It rejects an AfD government without yet helping to form an alternative.
Meanwhile, SPD parliamentary leaders meeting in Bremen called for a federal and state working group to prepare evidence for a possible AfD ban before the end of the year. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius backs preparations for a possible ban. His version of defending democracy starts with examining how to remove one of the voters’ choices. The immediate contest is still parliamentary: Siegmund will try to secure the missing votes in December, while his opponents must find enough votes to keep him out.
Who Gets the State’s Keys?
The more revealing battle concerns powers that an AfD government would inherit. On September 17, the Deutscher Richterbund, Germany’s leading association of judges and prosecutors, called for restrictions on political instructions to prosecutors, warning that a future state government could steer individual investigations. Its executive director, Sven Rebehn, argued that a tradition of ministerial restraint offered no effective protection against abuse.
This vulnerability was not discovered in an AfD manifesto. Germany’s prosecution services have long been subject to ministerial instructions. In 2019, the EU Court of Justice found that German public prosecutors exposed to possible executive instructions lacked the independence required to issue European arrest warrants.
Hamburg criminal lawyer Gül Pinar proposes a narrower fix: record ministerial instructions so lawyers can challenge them. The Federal Justice Ministry, meanwhile, defends political oversight as democratic accountability. The dispute is not simply whether prosecutors should be protected from the AfD. It is whether removing political control would also remove a legitimate check on prosecutors themselves.
Hesse supplies a second, less predictable conflict. More than a thousand lawyers signed an appeal for an AfD prohibition procedure. Hesse’s justice minister, Christian Heinz, asked court and prosecution authorities to examine whether individual signatories required measures under the rules governing their official duties. His ministry says the concern is impartiality, not punishment.
The judges’ association sees pressure on officials for expressing a political opinion. Saxony took a different position, treating judicial signatures as private activity beyond government responsibility. The supposed establishment is fighting internally over a basic question: can a judge campaign against a party and then impartially hear its cases?
German judges in session. Calls to shield prosecutors from political instructions have gained urgency as the AfD approaches office. The powers stayed the same; the prospective government changed
The Campaign Behind the Case
The legal campaign has identifiable organizers. In June, the civil-rights organization Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, GFF, published a 1,500-page assessment arguing that the AfD met the criteria for prohibition. An eight-person team worked for thirteen months under GFF legal director Bijan Moini.
GFF says more than twenty thousand private donors financed the project with over a million euros, raised with partners including Campact, Volksverpetzer, and Frag den Staat. The result was a privately funded assessment that politicians could cite when demanding state action. The organizers are public; whether their case meets the constitutional threshold remains for the court to decide.
The authors argue that the AfD threatens human dignity and democratic competition, including through plans to prosecute opponents. That is not a judicial finding. They also acknowledge that evidence for some allegations, including plans to abolish parliamentary democracy, did not independently meet their threshold.
Research became political theater in Erfurt on September 30. A roughly ten-hour hearing, initiated by the Left Party, brought together lawyers, GFF representative Valentina Chiofalo, entertainer Hape Kerkeling, and former domestic intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maaßen.
Konrad challenges the legal approach behind the proposed ban, arguing that a case must meet existing constitutional standards rather than count on changing them
Kerkeling invoked historical responsibility. Maaßen, invited by the AfD, disputed the evidence for a hidden anti-constitutional agenda. The clash exposed divisions behind the supposed institutional consensus. The hearing could build pressure, but only the federal government, Bundestag, or Bundesrat can seek a prohibition ruling.
Lawyer Jun argues that threatening the AfD’s survival could force it to change. Apparently, persuasion works better with a courthouse attached
Brussels Follows the Money
A six-member advisory committee was scheduled to begin examining Europe of Sovereign Nations, ESN, the European party that includes the AfD, for compliance with EU values on October 1. Its opinion will inform the EU political-party regulator’s decision on registration and funding. No outcome from the meeting had been confirmed.
The European Parliament requested the review in July after the EU’s party regulator raised concerns about ESN’s compliance with EU values, including allegations involving anti-immigration and anti-LGBT rhetoric. The immediate question is not whether its MEPs may keep their seats, but whether the European party still qualifies for registration and funding.
The six-member committee includes former European Commissioner Martine Reicherts and former Commission secretary-general Alexander Italianer. ESN vice president Alexander Sell questions its neutrality. EU institutions defend the appointments: the rules exclude serving officials and certain party employees but require no cooling-off period.
ESN’s European party and its same-named parliamentary group are separate organizations. Deregistration would not dissolve the group or erase its members’ mandates.
The committee has two months to issue an opinion. Further safeguards include an opportunity for Parliament and the Council to object. Nothing has yet been banned. The seats would remain. The organization supporting the party’s European campaigning could lose its registered status and funding.
Timing Can Decide the Outcome
Timing matters in different ways: it can deny a party a meaningful appeal or let an outgoing majority settle policy before its replacement takes over.
In Moldova, authorities removed Heart of Moldova and Greater Moldova from the September 2025 parliamentary election just days before voting, citing illegal financing and interference. International observers acknowledged genuine foreign interference but criticized the late exclusions: the parties had too little time to challenge them effectively. Even a successful appeal would offer little comfort after the election was over.
Germany used a different opening. On March 18, 2025, the outgoing Bundestag approved borrowing reforms and a €500 billion infrastructure fund before the parliament elected in February took over. The parties backing the package would lack the required supermajority in the new chamber. Rather than negotiate under the new arithmetic, they secured the decision under the old one.
These cases are not identical. In Moldova, timing limited the opportunity to contest exclusion. In Germany, it allowed an outgoing majority to commit its successors to a major policy change.
The December test is whether anyone beyond the AfD supplies the votes Siegmund needs, or whether its opponents assemble an alternative majority. Neither BSW’s abstention nor Siegmund’s confidence settles that question.
Germany’s institutions are entitled to defend the constitutional order. They should not confuse that task with preserving the current distribution of power. Losing an election and losing democracy are not the same event.
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