(de-news.net) – Germany’s debate concerning the AfD is expanding across education, parliament, state governments, and constitutional patriotism. Education Minister Karin Prien (CDU) warns that an AfD-led Saxony-Anhalt government could face legal and financial consequences for violating constitutional principles or federal funding agreements. CDU figures differ sharply: Boris Rhein favors AfD parliamentary participation and rejects a ban, while Sven Schulze opposes cooperation. The Greens seek a practical responses to the AfD’s appeal, while Jürgen Trittin backs targeted state-level bans. Meanwhile, Bremen Mayor Andreas Bovenschulte (SPD) defends patriotism grounded in constitutional democracy, freedom and human dignity.
A prospective AfD-led government in Saxony-Anhalt could face legal action and demands to reimburse federal education funding if it were to introduce significant policy changes, according to Education Minister Prien. She said the Federal Government could turn to constitutional litigation if fundamental principles, including equal treatment, were violated. Federal funding would provide an additional point of leverage because money allocated to state education programs could be reclaimed if agreed purposes were no longer observed, potentially through court proceedings.
Prien also warned that sweeping changes to school curricula could put the recognition of educational qualifications from Saxony-Anhalt at risk elsewhere in Germany. Although education falls primarily under the responsibility of the states, she argued that this autonomy was not unlimited. If an AfD-led government moved too far away from the established national consensus on education policy, other states could potentially refuse to recognize its school-leaving qualifications, an issue she said the Conference of Education Ministers would examine closely. The warning comes against the backdrop of the AfD’s education proposals in Saxony-Anhalt. Its state election platform calls, among other measures, for compulsory schooling to be abolished, separate classes to be established for refugee children and school inclusion to be ended. These proposals have intensified concerns about how an AfD-led administration could use the considerable authority that Germany’s federal system gives the states over education policy.
Prien said she was particularly concerned about the possibility of an AfD takeover because the party’s organization in Saxony-Anhalt is classified by the domestic intelligence agency as definitively far-right. Historical experience, she argued, demonstrated that culture and education had often become central targets for far-right political movements seeking to establish and disseminate their ideological views.
Rhein calls for parliamentary inclusion
Hesse’s Minister-President Rhein, meanwhile, has argued that AfD lawmakers should no longer be prevented from serving as chairmen of Bundestag committees. Since the party had been elected to parliament, he said, it should be treated accordingly, as is already the practice in Hesse and several other states. Rhein’s position reflects a distinction he considers important: the CDU should maintain clear political boundaries against the AfD while not excluding the party from parliamentary procedures to which it is formally entitled.
For Rhein, the political metaphor of a Brandmauer, or firewall, therefore does not adequately describe how the party should be handled within parliament. He instead identified himself with the idea of clearly defined red lines, a position associated with CDU researcher Andreas Rödder, and argued that such boundaries should apply both to substantive political questions and to personnel decisions. Rödder had resigned as head of the CDU’s Basic Values Commission after advocating a more flexible approach to the AfD. He subsequently developed the concept of red lines governing possible joint votes with the party, including the Federal Republic’s commitment to its Western alliances. Rhein’s position similarly seeks to distinguish between maintaining political boundaries and excluding AfD representatives from parliamentary functions.
The Hesse premier has also opposed an AfD prohibition proceeding. He argued that there was broad agreement within the CDU that such a process should not be pursued, pointing to the possibility that proceedings could take at least five years while their eventual outcome remained highly uncertain. His preference was for the AfD to be challenged politically rather than through legal measures. That position differs from the approach advocated by North Rhine-Westphalia Minister-President Hendrik Wüst (CDU), who had called for a federal-state working group to examine the possibility of an AfD ban. The disagreement reflects a broader debate within the Union over whether the party should primarily be confronted through political competition, institutional boundaries or legal instruments.
Rhein has also pointed out that AfD parliamentary groups formally have the right to nominate candidates for the chairmanships of several Bundestag committees. Their candidates, however, have so far failed to secure the necessary parliamentary majorities. The Federal Constitutional Court found no grounds for objecting to that situation. At the same time, Rhein has argued in favor of continuing the so-called Stadtbild debate initiated by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, which focused on perceptions of how immigration has affected the appearance of German cities. Critics have associated the debate with racist patterns of thinking, while Rhein has treated the continuation of such discussions as part of the political response to the AfD’s electoral success.
Saxony-Anhalt CDU rejects cooperation
Saxony-Anhalt Minister-President Sven Schulze (CDU) has again ruled out cooperation with the AfD, even while acknowledging serious problems within his own party that he said the CDU must address. For Schulze, however, resolving those difficulties does not require entering a coalition with the AfD. AfD parliamentary manager Bernd Baumann has taken the opposite approach, urging the Union to avoid cooperation with what he described as the political left and arguing that a majority of voters wanted an end to left-wing policies. He portrayed the CDU as occupying a strategically decisive position between the AfD and a political bloc comprising the Left, Social Democrats and Greens. The CDU, in his assessment, therefore faces a choice over whether it wants to be part of the solution or part of the problem.
Schulze has strongly rejected that reasoning. He argued that the AfD was not capable of moving Germany forward and that its experience in Saxony-Anhalt was already demonstrating the difference between making promises in opposition and actually governing. The party won the state election by a substantial margin over the CDU and is now holding talks with the BSW about forming a government, although the BSW has ruled out a coalition. Three weeks after the state election, the political situation therefore remained unresolved. In particular, the policy basis on which an AfD-led minority administration could operate had yet to be established, leaving negotiations with the BSW as a central element of the state’s uncertain path toward government formation.
Rainer Robra (CDU), head of the Saxony-Anhalt State Chancellery, has meanwhile warned against interpreting the AfD’s election victory simply as an eastern German phenomenon. In his assessment, the party was fundamentally shaped by political elites from western Germany and pursued a broadly nationalist agenda rather than a program specifically tailored to the conditions of Saxony-Anhalt. That distinction, Robra argued, also helps explain why federal issues proved more politically effective than state-level concerns during the campaign. The AfD was able to respond quickly to issues such as fuel prices and the conflict in Ukraine, while arguments centered on state politics increasingly struggled to gain traction.
Robra also said he understood why many eastern Germans had voted for the AfD in the September elections. Persistent perceptions of socioeconomic disadvantage remained significant, he argued, and were partly supported by actual economic conditions. The AfD had succeeded in appealing to that sense of disadvantage without providing convincing solutions, while the Federal Government had raised expectations that it subsequently failed to meet. At the same time, Robra strongly rejected proposals to respond to an AfD-led government through financial sanctions. Such measures, he argued, would conflict with the constitutional principle of fiscal equalization between economically stronger and weaker states. The broader principle of national solidarity, aimed at maintaining comparable living conditions throughout Germany, should not be called into question.
Greens seek a new strategy
The Greens’ parliamentary leaders, Katharina Dröge and Britta Haßelmann, have called for a fundamental reassessment of how democratic parties respond to the AfD. In a policy document distributed among Green lawmakers, they concluded that previous attempts to counter the party had been insufficient and acknowledged that all democratic parties, including the Greens themselves, shared responsibility for the AfD’s rise. The two parliamentary leaders argued that simply continuing to defend political positions that established parties had long regarded as correct would not produce a more effective response. Their assessment instead called for democratic parties to reconsider why existing approaches were failing to persuade substantial sections of the electorate.
At the center of their analysis was the argument that appeals to protecting democracy and the rule of law had become too abstract for many citizens. Democratic parties, they suggested, could increasingly appear to be defending a status quo that many people experienced as ineffective or dysfunctional in their everyday lives. The challenge, therefore, was not merely to defend democratic institutions rhetorically but to demonstrate their practical value. For that reason, Dröge and Haßelmann called for tangible political solutions, particularly in economically weaker regions where populist promises appeared to find the greatest resonance. Their analysis linked that support to residents’ perception that politics had forgotten or neglected their communities. Democratic parties, they argued, needed to address that perception through concrete action rather than relying solely on appeals to democratic principles.
Former Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin (Greens), however, has advocated a substantially different response. In light of the AfD’s electoral successes, he has called for targeted prohibition proceedings against several state organizations of the party, arguing that regional branches that openly acted in violation of the constitution should be prohibited. He specifically referred to the AfD organizations in Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Lower Saxony. Trittin based his argument on the Federal Constitutional Court’s 2017 ruling concerning the NPD. The court had determined that the party was clearly hostile to the constitution but declined to prohibit it because its political insignificance meant that a ban was not warranted. Trittin argued that this reasoning could not be transferred to the AfD because its political influence was clearly substantial.
Bovenschulte defends constitutional patriotism
Bovenschulte, president of the Bundesrat and mayor of Bremen, has rejected the AfD’s claim to represent patriotism or national pride. Speaking on German Unity Day, he described himself as a constitutional patriot and framed national pride instead around the achievements of a modern Germany based on freedom, democracy and human dignity. For Bovenschulte, that conception of patriotism differs fundamentally from unreflective nationalist rhetoric. He argued that pride in Germany could legitimately derive from what the country had achieved as a democratic constitutional state rather than from an abstract emphasis on national superiority.
Bovenschulte also urged Germans to view reunification through the achievements associated with freedom, democracy and human dignity. Despite the problems that remain, he maintained that the country’s reunification represented an accomplishment that could legitimately be a source of pride. He rejected the AfD’s understanding of patriotism because, in his assessment, the party did not stand for freedom or the rule of law and instead sought to restrict the equal participation of significant sections of society. He further argued that the party was not committed to free media, independent courts or academic freedom.
Bovenschulte consequently defended the political firewall against the AfD. In his view, democratic parties needed to maintain a clear and visible distinction from political forces that rejected human dignity, freedom and democracy while promoting the idea of an ethnically homogeneous national community. The debate over the AfD, he suggested, therefore extends beyond ordinary partisan competition to competing understandings of Germany’s constitutional and political identity.
