Interior ministers from Germany’s 16 federal states have agreed to end a practice under which resolutions at the Conference of Interior Ministers (IMK) were adopted only by absolute consensus, according to media reports dated 1 October 2026.
Under the new procedure, resolutions will be adopted if they receive at least 13 of the 16 votes. The reported change follows concern about political developments in Saxony-Anhalt, where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won the regional election on 6 September 2026.
The AfD won 39 seats, three short of the 42 required for an absolute majority. As of early October, negotiations on forming a new state government were still under way. The AfD was reported to be holding difficult coalition talks with former representatives of the Christian Democratic Union and the Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). A vote on the new state government is expected in December.
If the AfD leads a government in Saxony-Anhalt or another federal state, its interior minister would sit on the IMK. Under the former unanimity system, that representative could have blocked any IMK decision. The revised voting threshold is intended to prevent a single state from stopping the conference’s work.
The source also reports that German centrist and left-wing parties, as well as representatives of the country’s security services, have repeatedly expressed concern about publicly announced AfD plans to reorganise the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The BfV is subordinate to the Federal Ministry of the Interior and has officially classified the AfD as an extremist political force.
According to the source, the potential participation of an AfD representative in the IMK has raised concerns about access to confidential and classified information and about the possible impact on the BfV’s work. These concerns and the reported AfD plans are political assessments and allegations; the supplied material does not provide independent evidence of their likely consequences.
Read the cited report by The Local.
