Members of the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party have been barred from standing in next year’s mayoral election in Nieder-Olm after local authorities introduced a mandatory declaration excluding candidates linked to organisations labelled extremist by the state interior ministry.
Citing a “list of extremist organisations” compiled by the Rhineland-Palatinate Interior Ministry, which is led by the left-wing SPD, candidates are required to sign a declaration stating that they are not AfD members. The declaration also specifies that candidates must not have belonged to any organisation deemed hostile to the free democratic order within the past five years. This requirement is tied to the ministry’s officially published list of extremist organisations.
Alongside the AfD, which is currently leading national opinion polls, the list includes Islamist terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda and Hamas. However, the “Antifa Ost” does not appear on Interior Minister Michael Ebling’s list, despite having been designated a terrorist organization in the U.S.
The election for Nieder-Olm’s next mayor is scheduled for March 22, 2026. Roberto Kiefer intends to run as the AfD’s candidate. “This is tantamount to a party ban,” the 57-year-old German-American told Junge Freiheit on Wednesday evening. Nonetheless, he still plans to apply for candidacy at the district office on Thursday.
The exclusion of AfD candidates from elections in Rhineland-Palatinate is not without precedent. In Ludwigshafen, the case of AfD politician Joachim Paul drew wide attention after he was struck from the ballot despite leading in the polls. All parties except the FDP claimed he lacked constitutional loyalty, and the mayor requested a constitutional review from Minister Ebling.
More than three-quarters of eligible voters in Ludwigshafen ultimately abstained.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time the AfD has faced political isolation. In North Rhine-Westphalia, parties styling themselves as “defenders of democracy”—including the CDU, SPD and Greens—removed a democratically elected deputy mayor solely because she belonged to the AfD.
