Rhineland-Palatinate denies AfD members access to civil service!

Rhineland-Palatinate denies AfD members access to civil service!

A groundbreaking change in the public service is underway in Rhineland-Palatinate. On July 11, 2025, Interior Minister Michael Ebling (SPD) announced that AfD members would no longer be employed in the civil service. This measure is part of a comprehensive tightening of recruitment practices aimed at denying access to enemies of the constitution. Ebling explained that in the future, applicants will have to submit a written declaration of loyalty to the constitution to ensure that they do not belong to any extremist organization, including the AfD, or have belonged to them in the last five years. butenunbinnen.de reports on this.

The AfD is monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Rhineland-Palatinate and is considered to be “certainly right-wing extremist”. The decision aims to create the basis for a supposedly safe and democratic civil service career. This is not just a local issue; other federal states such as Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony are also examining measures to check compliance with the constitution in hiring, which shows that this problem takes on broader dimensions. In Saarland, too, careful individual examinations are already being carried out when hiring in the public service, while Hesse relies on individual examinations.

Reactions to the decision

The AfD itself has already taken legal action to challenge the classification by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which it believes is unconstitutional. Some politicians have accused Ebling of demanding a “reversal of the burden of proof” on officials, indicating bipartisan tensions. The CDU has criticized the announcement as a political orchestration and is demanding legal certainty in the proceedings.

Procedure and requirements for applicants

The new regulation on loyalty to the constitution, which also includes a new version of the administrative regulations, is crucial. Anyone who refuses to declare their loyalty to the constitution or cannot adequately respond to doubts will not be hired. This not only affects active applicants, but also those whose membership in a group classified as a suspected case can itself constitute exclusion criteria.

These developments raise questions about the future composition and recruitment policies of the public service. What is certain, however, is that with this decision, Rhineland-Palatinate is taking a remarkable step towards a clearer approach to extremist tendencies in the civil service - a hot topic that is stirring people's minds and is awaiting agreements within the federal states as soon as possible.