Dario Seifert

Dario Seifert (born 2 April 1994 in Recklinghausen, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a German politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a member of the Bundestag from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. He sits in the 21st Bundestag, which constituted itself on 25 March 2025, with the direct mandate for constituency 15, Vorpommern-Rügen – Vorpommern-Greifswald I. The Bundestag’s own biography, based on members’ statements, lists him as a Kaufmann für Bürokommunikation (office-communications clerk), religiously unaffiliated, unmarried, and the father of one child. His council offices and his graphic-design firm, Strela Medien, are in Stralsund, and regional reporting describes him as a Stralsund resident. At a state party congress in Grimmen in May 2026, delegates elected him secretary general of the AfD in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

In the 2025 German federal election on 23 February 2025 he took the constituency with 37.3 percent of the first votes (68,848), 17.4 percentage points above the AfD share there in 2021. Georg Günther of the CDU was second with 21.2 percent. Turnout was 78.6 percent of 237,125 eligible voters. The district is the one Angela Merkel held for more than twenty years; in 2021 the SPD’s Anna Kassautzki won it. Seifert was also third on the AfD list in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

As a teenager he joined the Junge Nationaldemokraten, the youth organisation of the National Democratic Party of Germany. He told the Nordkurier that he had looked for a political outlet in 2012, at 17, and had been a passive member for just under two years, and he denied membership in a neo-Nazi Kameradschaft. The same newspaper published a photograph of him at an NPD “mourning march” for German victims of the Second World War in Stralsund in October 2014. After the 2025 election the Neue Zürcher Zeitung described him as someone who had once been a neo-Nazi and placed him on the AfD’s right wing. In February 2024 the party’s state arbitration court barred him from internal office. The NZZ tied that case to a directional fight after a district-council election and to his support for Dennis Augustin, whose AfD membership had been annulled over an undisclosed NPD past; NDR reported that state chair Leif-Erik Holm had sought an expulsion for alleged closeness to right-wing extremists, that the expulsion did not go through, and that the office ban still left Seifert free to stand for public office.

In parliament he is a full member and Obmann of the Committee on Tourism and a deputy member of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Homeland. He remains a member of the district council of Vorpommern-Rügen, for which the Bundestag discloses a gross monthly allowance of 500 euro, and he chaired the AfD group in the Stralsund Bürgerschaft until April 2025. He continues to work as a self-employed graphic and media designer at Strela Medien. In 2023 that firm billed the AfD group on the district council about 6,000 euro for promotional goods and a logo; district auditors later treated the spending as outside the purpose of the public money paid to council groups, and Seifert told NDR that he had taken the order at the group’s request and had not been a member of the group at the time.

Early life and occupation

Childhood and training

Dario Seifert was born on 2 April 1994 in Recklinghausen, in North Rhine-Westphalia. The biography published by the Bundestag gives that date and place and describes him as having no religious affiliation, as unmarried, and as the parent of one child. The parliament notes that these particulars rest on members’ own statements. The list of those elected to the 21st Bundestag, published by the federal returning officer, records the same birth year, 1994.

He has placed his childhood on the island of Rügen, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. In answers the Nordkurier published on 21 February 2025, during the federal campaign, he said he had grown up in the small municipality of Wiek and still went there to see family and friends. Asked where in the region he most liked to eat a fish sandwich, he named the harbour at Wiek, on the Wieker Bodden, as a place to exchange everyday stress for a few quiet hours. The same profile gave his age as 30 and his residence as Stralsund. That is also the city named on his parliamentary disclosures for the work he did before taking a seat.

The occupation printed under his name on the Bundestag page, and the profession he gave the Nordkurier, is Kaufmann für Bürokommunikation, a commercial clerical qualification in the German apprenticeship system, concerned with office communication. Those disclosures and the candidate profile do not state the employer, the years of training, or any school. The clerical title is listed separately from the design self-employment he declared for the period before the mandate.

Graphic design work

The interests filed for the 21st Bundestag, and republished by Parliamentwatch (abgeordnetenwatch.de), name two jobs in Stralsund before he became a member. One was employment by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Fraktion on the district council of Vorpommern-Rügen. The other was self-employment in graphic design and media at Strela Medien. The entries give no start or end dates. Parliamentwatch places the design work under media and the council-group post under political life, and it attaches no income band to Strela Medien.

He has continued that self-employment as paid work alongside the mandate. Under remunerated activities in addition to the seat, the Bundestag again lists “Strela Medien, Stralsund, Selbstständiger Grafik- und Mediengestalter,” without an amount. In June 2026 Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) reported that it was still unclear how much the firm was bringing in.

Strela Medien does not appear as a widely documented commercial name with its own published client list. The work NDR was able to itemize, from receipts it said it held, was a 2023 commission for the AfD group on the Vorpommern-Rügen district council. Through the Stralsund firm, Seifert supplied a logo and promotional goods—folding rules, caps, ballpoint pens and mugs—and invoiced 3,502.27 euro in May and 2,395.12 euro in September, together just under 6,000 euro. The group paid both sums promptly into an account at the Ostseesparkasse. He told NDR that he had taken the order because the group asked him to, that he was not a member of the group in 2023, and that he saw neither a conflict of interest nor a reason to refuse.

Early political activity

Junge Nationaldemokraten

Seifert has said that in 2012, at 17, he was looking for a field of political activity and spent just under two years as what he called a passive member of the Junge Nationaldemokraten, then the youth organization of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). The party later took the name Die Heimat and the youth organization the name Junge Nationalisten; both still appear in the federal report on right-wing extremism. In an interview published by the Nordkurier on 26 January 2021 he said he had never belonged to any Kameradschaft and had no contact with such groups, and that everyone should be allowed a political development.

The Nordkurier reported that several sources had independently confirmed the membership. A photograph credited to Recherche Nord, the paper wrote, shows him second from the right at an NPD “Trauermarsch” in Stralsund in October 2014 for German victims of the Second World War. The paper described the march as attended by the neo-Nazi scene of the north-east, including the NPD local politician Sven Krüger. One source also alleged close contacts with the Nationale Sozialisten Rostock, which the Nordkurier called a neo-Nazi Kameradschaft; Seifert denied any such membership or contact.

The procession was held on 11 October 2014, the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Stralsund. A written question in the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern gave its motto as “Gegen Krieg und Völkermord – Nein zur NATO-Aggressionspolitik – Nein zum Krieg gegen Russland! Für ein würdiges Gedenken an die über 800 Opfer des amerikanischen Terroraktes.” The state government answered that the NPD district association Nordvorpommern had registered the march on 25 September 2014 and that 494 state-police officers were deployed. Sit-ins forced route changes; police recorded no arrests among NPD marchers and three among counter-demonstrators, with complaints of assault, masking and a weapon attributed to the counter-demonstrations. The Deutsche Presse-Agentur, carried by Die Welt, reported that several hundred residents answered with vigils, a citizens’ festival and a peace prayer, and that about 300 young people tried to stop a march of about 70 supporters of what the agency called the rechtsextremistische NPD. Police were quoted as saying that, up to that report, events had remained peaceful.

In March 2025 the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, citing research by the Ostsee-Zeitung and other media, wrote that as a youth Seifert had belonged to the NPD youth party in Vorpommern and had had contact with a Kameradschaft of neo-Nazis. The NZZ headline described the new Bundestag member as “ein Mann, der einmal ein Neonazi war.”

Alternative for Germany and the Young Alternative

He joined the Alternative for Germany in December 2015. He told the Nordkurier that an incompatibility resolution already barred people who were still active in extremist organizations, while former members could be admitted if they dealt openly with their past and credibly set out a break with extremism, a decision for the state executive. He said he had given the then state speakers Leif-Erik Holm and Matthias Manthei a complete account of his earlier memberships, and that the board had answered that a supposed youthful error would not be held against someone for life so long as that history was handled openly.

NDR later described him as the founding chairman, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, of the Young Alternative for Germany, the AfD’s youth organization. A January 2019 assessment by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, published by netzpolitik.org, identified him as deputy state chairman of that organization. It quoted a Facebook post of February 2018 in which, on the bombing of Dresden, he called Björn Höcke’s demand for an “erinnerungspolitische Wende” more urgent than ever and wrote that “patriots” sought a dignified remembrance of “over 250,000 German victims” and to free themselves from “the anti-German perpetrator myth of the left-wing mainstream.” The office presented the post as an unusually open relativization of Nazi crimes, and separately noted that he had argued against “personnel separatism on the political right,” pointing to support for the AfD from the dissolved party Pro Deutschland. Seifert called the charge that he had relativized the crimes of National Socialism “eine absolut unverschämte Unterstellung.”

The Nordkurier also reported that, like the former AfD state chairman Dennis Augustin, Seifert wore the red cross of St James (Jakobskreuz), which the paper described as the recognition symbol of an Islamophobic “Schlossgruppe” inside the north-eastern AfD.

The Federal Office classified the Young Alternative as a suspected right-wing extremist case in 2019 and, in April 2023, said those indications had hardened into certainty. Tagesschau quoted office president Thomas Haldenwang that there was no longer any doubt the organization was pursuing anti-constitutional aims, and quoted the office on a völkisch concept of society, grounded in biologist assumptions and an ethnoculturally homogeneous people, that devalued citizens with a migration background. On 5 February 2024 the Administrative Court of Cologne, in summary proceedings, rejected an emergency application by the AfD and the Young Alternative. It held that preserving “the German people in its ethnic stock,” and if possible excluding people called “ethnically foreign,” was a central idea of the youth organization and a violation of human dignity, and it also cited links to the Identitarian Movement.

Local government

District council of Vorpommern-Rügen

Seifert was elected to the Kreistag of Vorpommern-Rügen, the 69-seat district council in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, on 26 May 2019. The election committee certified the result on 3 June, with turnout at 54.3 percent. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) received 44,503 votes (14.9 percent) and 10 seats, behind the Christian Democratic Union on 20 and Die Linke on 11. Seifert was returned for electoral area 6, where he had 170 votes (1.0 percent) and the AfD won one seat.

The ten AfD councillors did not begin the term in one faction. On 30 May 2019 Helmut Poppe, Seifert, Anita Zimmermann and Thomas Naulin met in Bergen auf Rügen and, the district association reported, formed a group called AfD-Kreistagsfraktion Vorpommern-Rügen, with Naulin as chair and Zimmermann as deputy. Stefan Giese, Philipp Laars and Roland Herrmann were named as further members only if they agreed. In September 2020 the state association reported that the faction chaired by Laars had unanimously admitted Naulin, Seifert, Zimmermann and Poppe, making a group of ten, the figure matching the election. It said internal matters that had blocked a joint faction at the start of the term had been dealt with. State spokesman Leif-Erik Holm presented the step as giving the voters’ result a single faction; Laars said it would take up further committee seats.

Seifert was re-elected on 9 June 2024. The final result, adopted on 17 June and announced the next day, put turnout at 61.6 percent. The AfD rose to 86,872 votes (25.7 percent) and 18 seats, second to the CDU on 20. In electoral area 7, where the AfD won one seat, Seifert received 2,678 votes (8.7 percent), the highest personal total among AfD candidates in that count. On 15 July 2025, after what it called the end of a one-year board term, the faction elected Detlef Kegel chair and Seifert, Zimmermann and Ulf Braum deputies, for a term it put at two years. Outgoing chair Naulin and deputies Michael Kasch and Sandra Graf had not stood again.

Before Seifert entered the Bundestag, his disclosure listed employment with that Kreistag faction and self-employment as a graphic and media designer at Strela Medien. For the council seat he reported 500.00 euro gross a month. The district charter, consolidated through the amendment of 17 March 2025, sets a monthly basic allowance of 500 euro for members who receive no function-related allowance, plus 60 euro per sitting of the council, a committee or their faction. Faction chairs are on a separate monthly scale of 620, 670 or 720 euro by faction size, and those function-related sums are not combined.

Stralsund city council

On 9 June 2024 Seifert was also elected to the Bürgerschaft of the Hanseatic city of Stralsund. The election committee certified the result on 12 June. The official gazette of 17 June carried it, and a correction of 27 June added the Adomeit voters’ group to the seat table without changing the AfD line: 16,642 votes (21.4 percent) and 9 of 43 seats, second to the CDU on 11 and ahead of Bürger für Stralsund on 8. Seifert was one of four AfD members elected in the city’s electoral area 3, covering Tribseer, Franken and Süd, and the city listed him for the 2024–2029 term.

The new Bürgerschaft met on 11 July 2024 at 15:00 in the Löwenscher Saal of the town hall to elect its president and deputies and to announce factions and committee places. SessionNet dates Seifert’s AfD membership of the Bürgerschaft from that day, with no end date. He was a full member of the main committee from 11 July 2024 to 14 May 2025, and until 13 November 2024 a deputy member of the committees for finance and procurement and for security and public order.

The Bundestag entry for functions in public bodies lists him as a Bürgerschaft member and as chair of its AfD faction until April 2025, with no separate payment stated for those offices. The city’s faction directory names Sandra Graf as chair; the group’s office is room 2.30 of the town hall on the Alter Markt.

Party discipline and the 2024 office ban

Faction conflict

In the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern branch of the Alternative for Germany, Seifert was drawn into a directional conflict between state chairman Leif-Erik Holm and the circle around Dennis Augustin, a former co-chair. The Nordkurier reported that Augustin's membership had been annulled after the paper's reporting on an undisclosed past in the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). The Neue Zürcher Zeitung later called Augustin a völkisch-national deputy expelled for concealing contacts with the radical-right NPD, and treated that expulsion as the occasion of a dispute, after a district-council election, that split the state party.

Seifert did not break with him. In January 2021 the Nordkurier wrote that the two had stayed politically close and that both wore the red St James's cross of the "Schlossgruppe," a badge of the party's north-eastern right. Augustin had formed a council group, "Heimat und Identität," in Ludwigslust-Parchim; in early October 2020 it admitted Stefan Köster, then the NPD's state chairman. The AfD faction there decided, as a demarcation, not to support that group's motions. Seifert resigned in mid-October 2020 as faction business manager, calling the decision "ein ganz übler Verrat an den Grundsätzen der AfD" and "Heuchelei" — a betrayal of AfD principles, and hypocrisy. The NZZ later described this as "unbroken solidarity" with Augustin and wrote that the solidarity itself produced an expulsion case against Seifert.

A parallel dispute concerned the district council of Vorpommern-Rügen, where Seifert sat. NDR reported in May 2026 that in 2020 he had broken up the AfD faction there and tried to build a rival one. In a correction of 5 June 2026 the Nordkurier named that step as the formal charge: party-damaging conduct by founding an independent district-council faction that shut out other elected AfD members.

Arbitration and the office ban

An expulsion procedure was already running by January 2021, the Nordkurier reported; a dpa account later carried by the Süddeutsche Zeitung dated the opening of a disciplinary case to 2019. It did not remove him from the party. In February 2024 the state arbitration court (Landesschiedsgericht) imposed a ban on internal party office. The NZZ wrote that the expulsion case, after a long exchange, had gone in his favour but still yielded the ban; NDR, in November 2024, said the expulsion effort had come to nothing and that the court had imposed the ban anyway. The Nordkurier described a two-year ban and reported in May 2026 that it had recently lapsed; NDR the same month said it had ended in the spring.

The sanction did not reach elected office. The NZZ wrote that posts obtained by a mandate, including a direct candidacy, were outside it, and that Seifert had therefore taken the ruling calmly. NDR stated the same limit — no internal party functions, but he could stand for political office — and noted that he was the direct candidate in the Rügen–Stralsund Bundestag constituency Holm had held, while Holm stood in western Mecklenburg.

What the ban was for is reported differently. NDR wrote in November 2024 that Holm had wanted Seifert expelled for an alleged excessive proximity to right-wing extremists. The NZZ instead attributed the February 2024 ban to the directional fight and to solidarity with Augustin, and placed Seifert on the party's outer right. On 5 June 2026 the Nordkurier withdrew the impression, left by an earlier version of its report, that Holm had sought expulsion over Seifert's former membership in the NPD youth organisation and a supposed "too great proximity to right-wing extremists." The paper stated that the arbitration case had been the faction-founding charge.

Seifert rejected an ideological reading. He told the dpa, as published by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, that accusations of insufficient distancing from right-wing extremism were "für völlig haltlos" ("wholly unfounded"), and wrote that the 2019 procedure had not concerned substantive positions and that the underlying disputes were long settled. To the Nordkurier in 2021 he denied any Kameradschaft membership or contact. A report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, as the paper relayed it, was taken to show that he opposed demarcation on the political right and had relativised Nazi crimes; he called the second point "eine absolut unverschämte Unterstellung" ("an absolutely outrageous insinuation").

Election to the Bundestag

Candidacies in 2021 and 2025

Seifert’s first attempt to stand for the Bundestag in constituency 15, Vorpommern-Rügen – Vorpommern-Greifswald I, was settled inside the Alternative for Germany (AfD). In January 2021 the executive of the AfD’s Vorpommern-Rügen district association proposed the then 26-year-old from Stralsund as its direct candidate. The Nordkurier reported that a district party meeting in Grimmen in February was to make the nomination, and that the rival was the state chairman and sitting member Leif-Erik Holm, who wanted to keep his Bundestag seat. The same report noted that Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) had won the constituency at every federal election since 1990 and was not standing again. The Ostsee-Zeitung headlined the episode as a power struggle between Seifert and Holm and later reported that Holm had prevailed, in a piece whose title said the dispute had come down to 30 euros.

On 30 July 2021 the constituency electoral committee admitted Holm, not Seifert, as the AfD candidate for the election of 26 September. In the final result Holm’s party received 33,025 first votes (19.9 percent, 0.7 points more than in 2017). Anna Kassautzki of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), also an admitted candidate, won the direct mandate with 40,429 votes (24.3 percent). Georg Günther of the CDU, likewise admitted in 2021, was second with 33,903 (20.4 percent), 23.6 points below the CDU’s 2017 share. Turnout was 70.1 percent of 241,066 eligible voters. In 2017 the CDU had taken 44.0 percent of the first votes (73,746) and the AfD 19.2 percent (32,173). A later report by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur stated that Holm had been the AfD candidate against Merkel in 2017 and against Kassautzki in 2021, had lost the constituency both times, and had entered the Bundestag on the state list on both occasions.

For the snap 2025 German federal election, an AfD assembly in Neubrandenburg on 23 November 2024 again put Holm first on the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern list, by 334 votes to 107 against state treasurer Martin Schmidt, and placed the member Enrico Komning second with 407 votes and no opponent. Seifert, described there as the new direct candidate for constituency 15 and a member of the Vorpommern-Rügen district council, was proposed by Holm for third place and elected by a large majority. The state Young Alternative for Germany had nominated him unanimously for the Bundestag election. The same dpa report said Seifert, then 30, was chairman of the Stralsund city assembly and a representative of the Young Alternative. In his nomination speech he called migration the greatest challenge, said he did not want “West German conditions” in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern without defining the phrase, and said he wanted Germany to “remain the country of the Germans.” The report also said Holm would stand in constituency 12, Schwerin – Ludwigslust-Parchim I – Nordwestmecklenburg I, rather than again in constituency 15.

The constituency electoral committee admitted eight direct candidacies on 24 January 2025. The returning officer’s notice of 31 January lists Seifert for the AfD as an office-communications clerk, born in 1994 and living in Stralsund, with Kassautzki (SPD), Günther (CDU), Hennis Herbst (Die Linke), Niklas Wagner (Free Democratic Party), Claudia Müller (Alliance 90/The Greens), Robert Gabel (Partei Mensch Umwelt Tierschutz) and Holger Gutzmann (Free Voters). The federal returning officer’s register of members elected in 2025 records that Seifert also stood third on the AfD list in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Result in constituency 15

The constituency, numbered 15 and named Vorpommern-Rügen – Vorpommern-Greifswald I, comprises the whole district of Vorpommern-Rügen, including Stralsund and the island of Rügen, and, from the district of Vorpommern-Greifswald, the city of Greifswald together with Amt Landhagen (Behrenhoff, Dargelin, Dersekow, Hinrichshagen, Levenhagen, Mesekenhagen, Neuenkirchen, Wackerow and Weitenhagen). The remaining municipalities of Vorpommern-Greifswald belong to constituency 16. Before polling day, NDR described the outgoing representation of the seat as Kassautzki on the direct mandate and Holm and Müller via state lists, and listed the same eight direct candidates.

The election was held on 23 February 2025. In the final result, Seifert won the direct mandate with 68,848 first votes, 37.3 percent, 17.4 percentage points above the AfD share in 2021. Günther was second with 39,237 votes (21.2 percent, up 0.8 points). Kassautzki received 26,885 (14.6 percent, down 9.8 points) and Herbst 24,633 (13.3 percent, down 0.4). Müller took 9,066 (4.9 percent, down 2.4), Gabel 6,199 (3.4 percent, up 0.3), Gutzmann 4,982 (2.7 percent, up 1.6) and Wagner 4,814 (2.6 percent, down 4.0). Those eight were the only direct candidates; valid first votes totalled 184,664. Of 237,125 people eligible to vote, 186,435 cast a ballot, a turnout of 78.6 percent and 8.6 points higher than in 2021. Invalid first votes numbered 1,771 (0.9 percent).

On the party-list ballot the AfD led with 65,651 second votes (35.5 percent, up 16.6 points). The CDU followed with 32,674 (17.7 percent, down 1.0), Die Linke with 23,214 (12.5 percent, up 1.2), the SPD with 19,150 (10.3 percent, down 14.7) and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which had no constituency candidate, with 18,773 (10.1 percent). Alliance 90/The Greens received 11,467 second votes (6.2 percent) and the FDP 6,205 (3.4 percent). The federal returning officer lists Seifert as elected in constituency 015 with 37.3 percent, and only additionally as a candidate in third place on the state list, so the seat he took was the direct mandate. The 21st Bundestag convened on 25 March 2025.

Parliamentary work

Committees

Dario Seifert took his seat in the 21st Bundestag at the chamber’s constitutive sitting on 25 March 2025. The Bundestag’s biography lists him, for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) group, as an ordinary member and as Obmann of the Committee on Tourism (Ausschuss für Tourismus), and as a deputy member of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Homeland (Ausschuss für Landwirtschaft, Ernährung und Heimat). The tourism committee, constituted on 21 May 2025, has 14 full members: five from the CDU/CSU, three from the AfD, three from the Social Democratic Party of Germany, two from Alliance 90/The Greens and one from Die Linke. Anja Karliczek (CDU/CSU) was elected chair with 11 votes in favour, none against and three abstentions; the AfD’s full members were Erhard Brucker, Sebastian Münzenmaier and Seifert.

Inquiries and plenary contributions

On 25 June 2025, questioning the government, Seifert asked economic-affairs minister Katherina Reiche why a reduced value-added tax planned for restaurant meals from 2026 would not cover drinks, which he said carried the margin for businesses on the Baltic Sea. Reiche said she was not a restaurant-trade specialist, pointed to relief in the coalition agreement, and said the German National Tourist Board’s funding would rise to 40 million euros, with the tax answer to follow. Seifert said that missed the question and asked if the budget debates would take it up; Reiche said the House could debate it and that she expected a workable rule for tourism and gastronomy.

The next day he gave his first speech, on the First Act amending the Direct Payments Act under the Common Agricultural Policy. He called new rules on grazing, waterside strips and soil cultivation a burden on family farms, opposed tying direct payments to environmental services such as flowering strips on productive land, and said farm policy should be set in Germany rather than by the European Union. Coalition speakers described the bill as a twelve-month delay of two eco-schemes, on dairy grazing and biodiversity areas, which they said the Länder could not yet administer. The AfD voted against; the CDU/CSU and the SPD passed it, with the Greens and Die Linke also voting no.

On 27 March 2026 he closed debate on the AfD motion “Prevent a price explosion in the restaurant trade — secure jobs — cut red tape” (printed paper 21/4943), which he had not signed as an initiator. He said that since 2019 one establishment in five had closed in some regions, and that losing a village inn also removed its last meeting place. He asked for a permanent 7 percent rate on food and drinks, because pubs depend on drink sales, and described origin labelling and documentation rules as turning owners into clerks. The motion was referred to committee without a vote on the substance.

A written question answered on 22 May 2025 asked whether official statistics linked AfD results to holiday cancellations; state secretary Bernhard Kluttig replied that they did not, so no trend could be stated. On 12 August 2025 he was first signatory of a minor interpellation on the Skilled Immigration Act and the Opportunity Residence Act (printed paper 21/1191). It cited a report to the Tourism Committee that in August 2024 about 34,000 people aimed at food preparation, tourism, gastronomy and hotels were unemployed against about 16,000 vacancies, while the yearly Western Balkans work quota had been doubled from 25,000 to 50,000, the requirement of a related qualification had been dropped, and language skills were no longer required in some cases. It asked how many of those entrants lacked a qualification recognised in Germany, how long they stayed in insured work, and how many Germans in the same occupations were unemployed.

On 7 May 2026 he was first signatory of an interpellation on tourist infrastructure in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (printed paper 21/5814), asking how applications, approvals and payments under the joint tasks for regional economic structure and for agricultural structure and coastal protection had run from 2020 to 2025, and why bids failed. On 12 October 2026 he was a named questioner on whether permanent residence in holiday-home areas was taking land out of tourist use.

On 21 October 2026 he was first signatory of an interpellation on the liquefied natural gas terminal at Mukran in Sassnitz and the pipeline across the Greifswald Bodden (printed paper 21/8742). It states that the private “Deutsche Ostsee” terminal on Rügen was licensed in 2024 under the LNG acceleration statute without an ordinary environmental impact assessment, and that the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court had ordered the operator to pay about 70 million euros in pipeline running costs. The questions cover that lawsuit, any federal guarantee, use of the terminal in each half of 2026, effects on harbour porpoises, birds and local tourism, and costs for Sassnitz and Vorpommern-Rügen; the paper itself has no government reply. On 2 March 2026 he was a later signatory of an interpellation on nutrient cycles and slurry imports (printed paper 21/4407), covering regional imbalances, manure imports and nitrate “red areas.”

Commercial dealings and the district audit

Invoices from Strela Medien

In 2023 Strela Medien, the Stralsund firm through which Dario Seifert works as a graphic and media designer, invoiced the Alternative for Germany (AfD) faction on the district council (Kreistag) of Vorpommern-Rügen. NDR, which said it held the receipts, reported an invoice of 3,502.27 euro in May and one of 2,395.12 euro in September—together just under 6,000 euro—for folding rules, caps, ballpoint pens and mugs, and for a faction logo. The faction paid both sums promptly into an account at the Ostseesparkasse.

Seifert told NDR that he had taken the order at the faction’s request, that he was not a member of it in 2023, and that he saw no conflict of interest and no reason to refuse. He said he had not known the spending might fall outside the purpose of the grant, and he left unanswered whether he had worked for other AfD factions. Stefan Giese, faction chair from July 2022 to May 2024, said the faction had commissioned him by a majority vote.

The Bundestag register of members’ interests lists him as a self-employed graphic and media designer at Strela Medien in Stralsund both before the mandate and as paid work alongside it, without stating the income. The same entry lists employment by the AfD Kreistag faction in Stralsund among his jobs before he entered parliament, with no dates.

Audit findings and repayment vote

Factions receive district grants under section 19 of the implementing regulation to the municipal constitution of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the council’s rules of procedure, and a directive on how the money may be used. After the 2019–2024 term, the AfD faction filed statements for 2023 and 2024. A proposal signed on 14 April 2026 by Landrat Dr. Stefan Kerth records that the audit of those statements, adopted by the district audit committee on 19 January 2026, found 8,573.63 euro in payments that were not eligible for the grant and 1,422.85 euro for which no proof was produced and which could not be treated as recurring costs. The amount proposed for recovery was 9,996.48 euro.

NDR, reporting on the audit report, wrote that promotional material was not treated as public-relations spending a council faction may fund from the grant. The two Strela invoices were listed without naming the contractor, and the administration did not criticize the award to Seifert. Of about 8,500 euro classed through 2024 as outside the purpose of the grant, NDR said most had gone to his firm. NDR also reported as ineligible a drinks refrigerator at 405 euro, which the examiners said was not office equipment, and a restaurant bill of 222.50 euro, which they said exceeded a snack, and it listed a Christmas party and missing statements and receipts. The faction had received about 97,500 euro in grants over the two years.

On 18 May 2026 the Kreistag, meeting in Grimmen, adopted the proposal, BV/4/0193, unanimously. It instructs the Landrat to reclaim the 9,996.48 euro from the former AfD faction and states that the council recognizes the use as contrary to the grant’s purpose. The proposal says the council had to decide before the Landrat could pursue the claim, which lies against the dissolved faction—still existing in law while it is wound up—and that, short of liability for unlawful acts by individual members, the old faction is in principle liable with its own assets. It cites a judgment of the Higher Labour Court in Hamm of 12 December 2002 (1 (11) Sa 1813/01).

Seifert was present. NDR reported that he and the AfD faction then on the council voted for the reclaim and that he blamed the former leadership, which had left office after the 2024 municipal election. Detlef Kegel, chair of the current faction, told the council that his faction was not the legal successor, that responsibility lay with the former chair—who had been required to confirm proper use in writing—and that a party expulsion procedure was under way. NDR reported that the procedure concerned Giese’s 2024 candidacy as an individual against the AfD list, and that Giese said he had nothing legally objectionable to answer for and that nothing could be recovered from a dissolved faction. Ute Bartel, chair of the Social Democratic Party of Germany faction, called that distancing verlogen. Kerth, who belongs to no party, described the former faction’s conduct as an incident the district had not seen before.

Secretary general of the state party

Election in Grimmen

On 30 May 2026, at a state congress of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Grimmen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 237 delegates elected Bundestag member Dario Seifert the state association's first secretary general (Generalsekretär). He had no opposing candidate and received just under 92 percent of the vote, after a unanimous nomination by the state executive, his Vorpommern-Rügen district association—the state party's largest—said. The association called the new post a response to growth and to the organizational demands of the autumn Landtag election; Seifert's office said the work was communication, campaigning and organization.

Seifert, then 32 and based in Stralsund, said the party was entering the intensive phase of the campaign and had to be united and professional. The same day the delegates adopted, unanimously, the programme for the 2026 Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election, a text of more than 90 pages that the party itself titled a government programme and issued under the slogan "Unser Land zuerst". State co-chairman and minister-president candidate Leif-Erik Holm again said the AfD meant to govern alone.

Holm and Seifert had been rivals—NDR reported that Seifert tried to unseat him in 2021—but that conflict was not visible in Grimmen. Holm praised Seifert's talent for organization and communication and the growth of Vorpommern-Rügen, whose membership he called unmatched in Germany. NDR described the secretary general as the person who would coordinate the party, manage campaigns and look after its youth. Congress reporting placed him on the party's right: he had belonged to the former youth organization Young Alternative for Germany, and had told the Nordkurier of a youthful membership in the Junge Nationaldemokraten, the youth wing of the National Democratic Party of Germany. Before the vote Holm called that past a "jugendliche Verirrung"—years ago, and a mistake anyone might make—while Seifert had told dpa that accusations of insufficient distance from right-wing extremism were completely unfounded. Die Tageszeitung wrote that Holm, who had earlier wanted Seifert out of the party, could not prevent the election.

Role around the 2026 state election

In May an Infratest dimap poll for NDR put the AfD at 36 percent and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) of minister-president Manuela Schwesig at 27. Holm told delegates he wanted at least 43 percent, the share he tied to an absolute majority; Greifswald political scientist Jochen Müller, quoted by dpa, called that majority practically ruled out and participation in government unrealistic, because the other parties together would still have a clear majority.

The election was held on 20 September 2026. On 30 September state returning officer Christian Boden confirmed a final result unchanged from the preliminary party shares: the AfD 38.2 percent, the SPD 35.5, Die Linke 6.5, Alliance 90/The Greens 5.7 and the Christian Democratic Union 4.9, short of the five-percent hurdle. Turnout was 78.0 percent, up from 70.8 percent in 2021. Der Spiegel, citing the state election authority, reported 32 seats for the AfD, 29 for the SPD and five each for the Left and the Greens in a Landtag of 71; the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, on 4.8 percent, also stayed out.

Holm at first derived a mandate to govern and said he would talk to the other parties, which had ruled out working with the AfD. The next day lead candidate Enrico Schult said the party was prepared for opposition, and Holm told NDR Info that he thought the AfD could govern but that it did not then look as if it would. Schwesig called the SPD share a voter mandate to form what she termed a democratic and stable government with the Greens and the Left.

On 23 September dpa reported a 25-page internal campaign review, first described by the Ostdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and written by Daniel Fiß, an aide to the AfD group whom parliamentary manager Thore Stein credited with leading the campaign. It called the dual leadership—Schult as lead candidate, Holm the minister-president candidate without a list place—"kommunikativ und organisatorisch … ein absolutes Desaster", and said that split, weak committee discipline and missing coordination had squandered the chance of taking over the state government. Asked about the criticism of Holm, Seifert said as secretary general that the party could be "really very satisfied": it was the strongest force and had one of the best results in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern's history. The paper was not a reckoning, he added; not everything had been perfect, but the strategy had on the whole worked.

The AfD remained in opposition. As of 22 October the SPD, the Left and the Greens were still in coalition talks, including on agriculture and climate, and NDR described them as the prospective partners; no agreement had been concluded.

Positions and public debate

Stated positions

In the 2025 campaign the Neue Zürcher Zeitung described Seifert as using Alternative for Germany themes of national identity, patriotism and Heimatliebe, in measured language rather than open abuse, under the slogan “Etwas muss sich ändern”. At a state congress in November 2024 he said he did not want western German conditions in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: “Ich möchte, dass Deutschland auch in Zukunft das Land der Deutschen bleibt.” In the Bundestag on 26 September 2025 he argued that the government was preaching further immigration while fisheries and hospitality buckled under energy costs, and that “nicht Migration, sondern echte Entlastung” would secure tourism.

Tourism is what he has set out most fully on the floor. He called the sector “stiefmütterlich behandelt”, set more than €20 million still planned, he said, for tourism projects abroad against €12 million for paths, jetties and shelters, and asked for investment on the coast. On 27 March 2026 he said gastronomy had been in acute crisis since 2019, demanded a permanent 7 percent value-added tax on drinks as well as food, and blamed paperwork for crushing small family firms in a constituency that lived from visitors. Asked by the Greifswald student paper moritz.medien what he wanted locally, he named infrastructure, transport and housing so that families and young workers would stay.

On energy, his name leads a minor interpellation of 21 October 2026 on the liquefied-natural-gas terminal at Mukran, in Sassnitz on Rügen, asking about pipeline costs, the missing environmental assessment, and effects on wildlife and tourism. The state programme adopted in Grimmen the day he became general secretary — he said the campaign had to be “geschlossen” and “professionell” — called for limits on migration, a return to nuclear power, renewed use of the Nord Stream pipelines, an end to the carbon tax and criticism of wind expansion. The Norddeutscher Rundfunk reported that the draft also named possible nuclear sites in the state and rejected wind energy.

Media and political reaction

Andrea Jeska’s NZZ report of 1 March 2025 presented the winner in Angela Merkel’s former constituency as “ein Mann, der einmal ein Neonazi war”, noting youth-wing membership of the National Democratic Party of Germany, contact with a neo-Nazi Kameradschaft, and a February 2024 office ban after loyalty to the expelled völkisch deputy Dennis Augustin — a ban that did not cover public mandates. Philipp Schulz, local editor of the Ostsee-Zeitung, said voters were not necessarily for the AfD ideologically but against the politics of recent years, and that Seifert was not “der nette Typ” he wished to seem. Hennis Herbst, state chair of Die Linke, said a broomstick would have done: “Die AfD wird hier nicht wegen irgendwelcher Personen gewählt.” Replying that September, Social Democratic Party of Germany deputy Christoph Schmid refused cooperation because “Tourismus hat was mit Weltoffenheit zu tun”, and said restaurants depended on workers from abroad.

In January 2021 the Nordkurier quoted his account of joining the Junge Nationaldemokraten in 2012, at 17, as a passive member, and his denial of any Kameradschaft tie; it also published a photograph from a 2014 NPD march in Stralsund. Before the 2026 congress he said responsibility should rest on “Leistung, Verlässlichkeit und das aktuelle Wirken”, not “jahrzehntealte politische Exkurse”, and called the distancing charge “völlig haltlos”. Leif-Erik Holm, who had tried to remove him, called the years a “kurze jugendliche Verirrung”; after the vote he praised an “ungeheures Organisations- und Kommunikationstalent”. NDR quoted “Ich würde das heute nicht mehr machen” and described regular invective against migrants. In 2024 it had read his Volkstrauertag line on the “tapferen Helden unseres Volkes” as language of the Nazi Heldengedenktag, aimed at Hitler’s Wehrmacht. Der Spiegel headlined its Grimmen report of 30 May 2026 “Der Generalsekretär, der ein Neonazi war”, with the caption “Exkurs” to the NPD. In September die tageszeitung quoted his rejection of an “antideutschen Tätermythos des linken Mainstreams” and read the unopposed 92 percent as proof that Holm was a presentable but replaceable front.