“The threat level for Germany from terrorism, extremism and espionage, especially from cyberattacks, is still at a very high and growing level,” the president of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Thomas Haldenwang, told a public committee hearing in the Bundestag in Berlin on Wednesday.

“In the future, too, there will be polarizing topics that extremists will exploit to carry their anti-democratic positions into the middle class of our society.”

The president of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, also stressed that situations around the world can change very fast and Germany needed to be able to respond quickly.

“I’m not only thinking of Afghanistan here,” Bruno Kahl told the lawmakers, emphasising the dangers posed by the arms race in novel technologies.

The BND has come under criticism because, like other foreign intelligence services, it had not foreseen the rapid advance of the hardline Islamist Taliban in Afghanistan.

The president of the Military Counter-Intelligence Service (MAD), Martina Rosenberg, warned that there was increased awareness of the dangers of right-wing extremism within Germany’s armed forces.

“Society is changing and radicalizing, and this also has an influence on the personnel of the Bundeswehr,” she said.

The service says the number of suspected right-wing extremist cases within the military rose from 363 to 477 between 2019 and 2020.

The nine-member control body normally meets in secret and monitors the work of the intelligence services. Only once a year do the members publicly question the heads of the three services.