Germany’s Security Labels Need a Reset

Germany’s domestic intelligence system was created to protect democracy. But democracy is not protected when public authorities confuse labels with evidence. A warning made in 2017 by Süddeutsche Zeitung remains urgent today: the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution — the Verfassungsschutz — has too often relied on political categories that can obscure real danger.

Writing after the G20 unrest in Hamburg, Jens Bisky argued in Süddeutsche Zeitung that Germany’s old language of “left,” “right,” “centre” and “extreme” had become too crude to explain political reality. His criticism went further than vocabulary. He warned that such categories can become institutional habits.

The article gave a sharp example:

This concern is not limited to one newspaper essay. Moritz Fischer, writing for the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, has described the Verfassungsschutz assessment itself as often part of the democratic problem, because classification by the agency can shape political competition, media treatment and public legitimacy. Once the state places a movement under suspicion, the label does not remain neutral. It becomes politically powerful.

A similar warning appears in recent political science analysis. Henning Schäckelhoff, writing in ECPR’s The Loop, asks whether Germany’s militant democracy is always protecting the constitution — or whether extremist labels may also shape political competition. His analysis of AfD classifications raises a difficult question: what happens when security categories appear to follow political dynamics rather than only concrete threat evidence?

The issue is not whether Germany faces real threats. It does. Violent extremism, terrorism, antisemitism, foreign interference, intimidation of public officials and anti-democratic networks all require serious attention. But precisely because these threats are real, the state must use accurate categories. A security service that watches the wrong targets risks missing the right ones.

The debate became current again in 2026, when German media reported that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution would no longer treat Scientology as a separate nationwide field of observation. The same reporting noted that the category “constitutionally relevant delegitimisation of the state,” introduced during the pandemic period, had also been withdrawn as an independent federal category. These decisions do not prove that no risks ever existed. But they do show that intelligence categories can be created, maintained and then quietly abandoned, often without enough public explanation of their cost, accuracy or consequences.

This is the rule-of-law question: when the state classifies a group, movement or milieu as suspicious, what evidence is required, how often is the classification reviewed, and what happens when the label later proves too broad, outdated or poorly targeted?

Germany does not need a weaker defence of democracy. It needs a more precise one. The Verfassungsschutz should monitor conduct before identity, evidence before reputation, and concrete threats before unpopular opinions. Every long-running category should face regular review. Every discontinued category should trigger public questions: what was found, what was missed, who was affected, and why did the label last as long as it did? What reparations should the state apparatus perform on those who were directly affected by the wrong or biased targeting?

The lesson from Bisky, Fischer and Schäckelhoff is clear: security labels are never just technical. They shape public reality. When rhetoric chooses the target, evidence can arrive too late — if it arrives at all.

Germany’s constitutional order deserves protection. But that protection must be guided by facts, proportionality and the rule of law — not by inherited categories that mistake controversy for danger.