AfD Federal Executive Establishes Investigation Commission for NRW State Association

Background of the Power Struggle

The background to the conflict is a chaotically conducted state party conference in Marl, at which the order of candidates for the upcoming 2027 state election in North Rhine-Westphalia was to be determined. The NRW state association has long been split between a more moderate camp around state chief Vincentz and a further-right camp around the member of the Bundestag Matthias Helferich. According to polls, at least the first 30 places could be enough for a state parliament mandate after the 2027 state election, making the fight over the list positions all the more intense.

The federal party leadership had demanded an early termination of the party conference. The AfD leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla accused Vincentz of irregularities in the nomination of the candidate list and demanded that the vote be aborted and the party conference started anew. The Vincentz opponents then left the hall in protest — and thus no longer had any influence on the naming of the further candidates for the NRW state election next year.

Vincentz, in turn, accused the opposing camp of obviously wanting only "eine für den Bundesvorstand genehme Landtagsliste zu generieren". He also expressed the suspicion that "mindestens fünf Mitglieder des aktuellen Bundesvorstandes" had been directly or indirectly involved "an der Sabotage der Aufstellung der Landesliste" or had at least partial knowledge of it.

Allegation of Manipulation

Places 1 to 10 were divided between the two camps, so that all candidates there ran without opponents. Subsequently, the faction around Helferich attempted to block the party conference and at times nominated more than its own 90 candidates for a list position. A clear majority of the nearly 500 delegates, however, voted against an abortion. A majority of the party conference then nevertheless adopted the candidate list for the state election.

For the candidate list, the camp around Vincentz secured most of the top positions with its narrow majority in the state association. As was heard from party circles, at the end of the meeting the vast majority of the 82 places in total were filled with Vincentz supporters. Vincentz himself came in at place 1 on the state list.

Risk of Non-Admission

The AfD leaders Weidel and Chrupalla warned that the candidate list might ultimately not be legally approved, with the consequence that the AfD would not be able to stand in the state election. This had already happened in Bremen at the 2023 state election. Currently, 12 AfD members of parliament sit in the parliament in Düsseldorf.

Vincentz publicly thanked Chrupalla for a statement on X, in which Chrupalla had written that a well and broadly composed state list is achieved "mit konstruktiver Zusammenarbeit, nicht mit taktischer Blockade von Mehrheiten". The state party also applied to the Düsseldorf Regional Court for a preliminary injunction against the federal leadership to prevent interference from Berlin.

Consequences for the Federal Party

The commission will accordingly also examine whether disciplinary proceedings should be initiated against individual members of the state association. This leaves the federal executive open to a later option of sanctions, without further splitting the already strained state association in the short term through formal party expulsions. The nomination of AfD candidates for the 2027 state election in NRW is thus politically contested, but formally initially completed.