09.27 BSTGermany's Alternative für Deutschland formally designated as extremistGermany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the country’s domestic intelligence agency, has just issued an update on its investigation into the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, classifying it as “confirmed right-wing extremist organisation.”As German media noted, previously only the AfD’s state associations in certain parts of Germany were classified as such, but the national party was given a lower, “suspected” status.Der Spiegel explains that the change in classification – underpinned by a 1,100-page report on the party – lowers the threshold for monitoring the party through intelligence means.“The ethnicity- and ancestry-based conception of the people that predominates within the party is not compatible with the free democratic order,” the domestic intelligence agency said in a statement, quoted by Reuters.“It aims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society, to subject them to treatment that violates the constitution, and thereby assign them a legally subordinate status,” Reuters quoted the statement.The AfD does not consider German citizens of immigrant background from predominantly Muslim countries as equal members of the German people, it added.ShareUpdated at 09.30 BST