loading . . . Is Germany's CDU Fighting the AfD via Brussels? Something remarkable has happened in EU electoral politics. The Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations (APPF) – a rather obscure body I have spent years trying, and failing, to activate - finally moved. According to POLITICO , it sent a 300-page dossier to the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission documenting why the Europe of Sovereign Nations party (home to Germany’s AfD, Bulgaria’s Revival, Éric Zemmour’s Reconquest and Poland’s Confederation) may need to be stripped of its registration and approximately €2 million in annual EU funding for failing to uphold EU values. This is, to my knowledge, the first time the APPF has taken proactive action of this kind. Potentially, this is the most consequential use to date of the EU’s party-funding rules as a tool of democratic self-defence. And I find myself in a peculiar position. I believe in this mechanism. I helped pioneer its use. I welcome its activation. Yet I cannot shake a troubling question: why now, and for whom? A mechanism I tried to trigger and was blocked from using In September 2018, together with Professor Laurent Pech, I filed the first-ever citizen requests under the EU’s horizontal values-compliance mechanism. Acting on behalf of The Good Lobby, we asked the APPF and the European Parliament to verify whether the European People’s Party and the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe still complied with EU values. Our case was straightforward. The EPP had persistently refused to act against Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz despite its systematic dismantling of Hungarian democracy. ACRE had done the same with Poland’s Law and Justice party. What followed was a masterclass in institutional obstruction. The APPF told us that the information we submitted was already “in the public domain” and therefore, in the Authority’s peculiar logic, did not make it “aware” of anything requiring action. The President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, then introduced admissibility requirements that existed nowhere in the rules. We filed in September 2018. By May 2019, our requests had still not even been admitted. The European Ombudsman, to whom we complained , declined to find maladministration. The conclusion we reached then was damning: a mechanism designed by Parliament and Council to enable democratic accountability had been hollowed out by the very institution it was meant to empower, with the APPF showing no appetite to act independently of its institutional environment. What the APPF has actually done and what it has not The APPF’s move regarding ESN was not prompted by citizens or by a formal request from any of the three EU institutions. It appears to be the direct exercise of its standing duty to monitor compliance with registration conditions, including respect for EU values, across all registered European political parties. Having identified facts casting doubt on ESN’s compliance, the Authority has now notified Parliament, Council and Commission. Those institutions have two months to decide whether to request a full verification. If any one of them does, the process can ultimately lead to ESN’s removal from the register, the loss of EU funding, and the loss of legal personality as a European political party. These are cascading consequences. They would not ban the AfD. Nor would they dissolve the ESN group in the European Parliament, whose MEPs will continue serving. But they would effectively end ESN’s existence as a recognised and funded European political actor ahead of the next EU elections in 2029. The process is slower and more safeguarded than the headlines suggest: it involves institutional review, independent assessment (via an expert independent committee) and, ultimately, political checks by Parliament and Council. But the central question remains: Why now? The APPF may well be acting on solid legal grounds. The reported dossier appears to contain the kind of factual record this mechanism was designed to assess: court rulings, social media posts documenting anti-LGBT and antisemitic rhetoric, and Revival’s formal cooperation with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia. Yet after more than a decade of underenforcement, the risk of selective oversight is hard to ignore. The APPF did not act when the EPP sheltered Fidesz after the Sargentini report documented Hungary’s democratic backsliding. Nor did it act when parties within the ECR, including Poland’s Law and Justice, mounted sustained attacks on judicial independence and other rule-of-law guarantees. Now, its first major target under its monitoring mandate is ESN and, politically, the AfD, a central force in German politics; its classification as extremist by domestic intelligence services is contested in court; and attempts to ban it through German constitutional channels have stalled, precisely because the threshold is high and insulated from political manipulation. This does not prove improper motive. But it draws attention to how transparent and accountable the Authority is in the exercise of its prerogatives , especially when the likely political beneficiary is Europe’s mainstream and largest right party, the EPP, and its largest member party, Germany’s CDU/CSU, which faces the AfD as a major electoral competitor. The APPF’s Director is jointly appointed by the three main EU institutions. Under the Regulation, the Director is required to act with full independence. Yet independence is meaningful only if it is exercised consistently and visibly. There is still no public record explaining how the Authority selects which registered parties to scrutinise, no external audit of its monitoring choices, and no mechanism for challenging a decision not to investigate. This is the bigger risk. A legally justified and legitimate case may nevertheless appear politically convenient. When EU oversight awakens only against parties representing a domestic - not an EU - challenge, the mechanism may shift from its original rationale of democratic self-defence to political containment. That perception alone would have serious consequences. It would hand the AfD precisely the narrative they crave: that the EU establishment is using supranational tools to silence domestic opponents. It would undermine the credibility of the oversight mechanism for any future use. None of this means the APPF is wrong about ESN. ESN may well breach the values that European political parties are legally required to respect. If so, the EU should not fund or recognise it. The APPF has finally woken up and gained the visibility it deserves. Whether it has woken up to the rule of law or merely to the electoral calendar will depend not on what the Authority does next, but on what the institutions it has just notified choose to do with the two months they have been given. If not, the citizens may help by filing a reasoned opinion to put the system to the test. This is European Question Time with Alberto Alemanno. It asks the uncomfortable questions that official channels avoid and makes sure those who govern Europe - whether in Brussels or in national capitals - can no longer hide from the people they serve. https://albertoalemanno.substack.com/p/is-germanys-cdu-fighting-the-afd
