Today in Germany: A roundup of the latest news on Thursday

At his summer press conference on Wednesday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was confident that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) would not win outright majorities in regional elections in two eastern states this year.

"I will do everything within my power in Germany to prevent it," said Merz. "What we do today determines the fate of our children and grandchildren." 

Polls give the AfD leads in both Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pommerania ahead of elections in those states in September.

In Saxony-Anhalt in particular the party is viewed as having a realistic chance of winning a majority of seats and forming its first ever state-level government.

"The election campaigns are just getting under way," Merz told an annual press gathering.

"I remain confident that we will succeed in preventing the AfD from securing a parliamentary majority" in the forthcoming regional elections, he said.

The AfD has long been strong in the former communist east of Germany, which includes Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pommerania.

Merz also said on Wednesday hat he was not opposed to Chinese carmakers taking over struggling German auto plants but cautioned it could not be a long-term solution for the industry's problems.

This comes amid shrinking employment in the automotive sector and after Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume told staff on Monday that up to another 50,000 job cuts were on the table on top of the same amount already agreed.

Family Minister Karin Prien is pushing ahead with her plans to reform advanced child maintenance (Unterhaltsvorschuss), a state payment single parents can apply for if the other parent fails to pay child support, which the state attempts to then recover.

The draft bill is expected to "enter the inter-governmental coordination process in July," she told broadcaster ARD on Wednesday.

The reform plans to stop payments at the child's 16th, rather than 19th, birthday and could therefore generate savings of several hundred million euros for the federal, state and local governments, Prien said.

A neo-Nazi provocateur was extradited from the Czech Republic to Germany on Wednesday and sent to a women's prison, despite being suspected of abusing German gender self-identification laws.

Marla-Svenja Liebich -- who used to go by the name of Sven before registering a new identity as a woman -- was transferred to a women's prison in the eastern city of Chemnitz, Benedikt Bernzen from the local prosecutors' office told reporters.

Liebich had been "co-operative", Bernzen said, adding that the management of the prison was now "considering how to implement the sentence".

Liebich, 55, has been a high-profile figure in eastern Germany's right-wing extremist scene for decades.

Liebich disappeared last August after failing to show up at a women's prison in Germany to serve a sentence of one and a half years for offences including incitement to racial hatred and slander.

In early April Liebich was arrested in the western Czech Republic under a European arrest warrant. The Czech courts threw out Liebich's attempts to stop extradition to Germany.

In late 2024, Liebich registered as a woman, following a reform that made it easier for people to change their legal gender.

The move was widely seen as intended to mock Germany's Self-Determination Act, introduced in November 2024, which allows people to more easily change their name and legally recognised gender.

As of Thursday morning, the German Press Agency reported that prison management in the Chemnitz women's prison decided that Liebich was to serve her sentence in a prison for men. 

It's bad timing for anyone looking to get away by car this week as fuel prices have risen sharply, according to German Automobile Association ADAC as re-escalating tensions in the Persian Gulf drove up oil prices.

As the holiday season begins in several states, the latest ADAC analysis of fuel prices in Germany found that a litre of Super E10 petrol was 5.9 cents higher this week than last at €2.083 euros.

Diesel prices rose even more steeply – by 11.7 cents – to reach €2.070 euros per litre, it said.