Matthias Ecke, the Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) top candidate in Saxony, was “seriously injured” and brought to hospital for treatment after four assailants attacked him as he was putting up campaign posters in the eastern German city of Dresden on Friday. An SPD source said his injuries would require an operation.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has condemned an attack on a European Parliament member from his party who was campaigning for re-election, calling it a “threat” to democracy and urging people to stand together against far-right activism.

Matthias Ecke, the Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) top candidate in Saxony, was “seriously injured” and brought to hospital for treatment after four assailants attacked him as he was putting up campaign posters in the eastern German city of Dresden late on Friday evening, police said.

An SPD source said the injuries of the 41-year-old current MEP, who was campaigning for June’s European Parliament election, would require an operation. 

“Democracy is threatened by this kind of act, and that is why shrugging our shoulders is never an option,” Scholz said Saturday during a congress for the upcoming European elections in the German capital Berlin.

“We must never accept such acts of violence... We must stand together against it.”

The fact that such things happen also has something to do with the speeches that are made and the moods that are created, Scholz said, referring to the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Shortly before Ecke’s assault, what appeared to be the same group attacked a 28-year-old campaigner for the Greens, who was also putting up posters on the same street Ece was attacked, police said, although his injuries were not as grievous.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned that “extremists and populists are stirring up a climate of increasing violence”.

“The constitutional state must and will respond to this with tough action and further protective measures for the democratic forces in our country,” she said in a statement, also calling the attack on Ecke an “attack on democracy”.

The SPD blamed supporters of the far-right AfD for the attack.

“Their supporters are now completely disinhibited and apparently see us democrats as fair game,” Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, who chair the SPD’s Saxony branch, said in the statement.

“The attack on Matthias Ecke is an unmistakable alarm signal to all people in this country,” they added. “Our democratic values ​​are under attack.”

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola was one of many European politicians to sympathise with Ecke, saying in a post on X that she was “horrified by the vicious attack”.

Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency says far-right extremism is the biggest threat to German democracy.

A surge in support for the AfD over the past year has taken the party to second place in nationwide polls.

The AfD is particularly strong in the eastern states of Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg. Surveys suggest it will come first in regional elections in all three this September.