Terror and sabotage: In Germany, according to the assessment of the Hessian interior minister, there is now “an anytime risk of attacks.” Roman Poseck (CDU) referred to the fact that his counterpart in the federal government, Alexander Dobrindt (CSU), “upgraded the threat level in July from abstract to high.”
At the presentation of the Hessian Constitutional Protection Report 2025 on Wednesday in Wiesbaden, Poseck explained: “The Islamist attack on the Christopher Street Day parade in Berlin and the hybrid attack scenario with a bomb-laden drone at the Leipzig airport have in the past weeks dramatically demonstrated how real this danger is.”
Increase in Threats
The current peculiarity in Germany is a clustering of threats from extremists engaging in criminal and violent acts as well as from some other states, for example involving sabotage, espionage, and hybrid threats—often covert actions aimed at spreading uncertainty.
In Hesse, when it comes to the number of criminal and violent acts by right-wing extremists, right-wing extremism remained by far the greatest threat in 2025 as well, according to Interior Minister Poseck. He said that right-wing extremists propagate “dehumanizing, racist and ethnonationalist worldviews.” He noted that the Hessian AfD, after years of legal clarification, is a suspect case for the Constitutional Protection. There are radical statements within its ranks that the party does not distance itself from.
Nevertheless, at a lower level the number of such acts by left-wing extremists and Islamists rose markedly. There was also a noticeable increase in Hessen in the number of recorded cases of espionage as well as of hybrid threats.
A few weeks after celebrating its 75th anniversary, the Hessian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, according to its president Bernd Neumann, “has never been as stretched as it is now.” The agency in Wiesbaden has expanded staff in recent years and more recently reorganized, including with regard to espionage. The Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution is a subordinate agency of the state interior ministry.
