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Friedrich Merz attends the closed meeting of the CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag at Andechs Monastery, Germany.
Germany’s Merz steps into controversy
Friedrich Merz has reminded Germany and the world that his center-right establishment party, the Christian Democratic Union, is now in a tight spot. The party leader suggested in an interview televised on Sunday that the CDU would be open to partnering with the hard-right Alternative für Deutschland party, at least at the local level.
"It's natural that we have to look for ways to ensure we can continue to work together" in places where AfD members win local elections, Merz said.
In the process, he implicitly acknowledged the reality that the AfD is polling at about 20% nationally and at about 30% in Germany’s East. But he was also breaking a taboo against mainstream acceptance of a party that, according to Eurasia Group, our parent company, has embraced an “openly xenophobic, anti-democratic, pro-Kremlin agenda.”
That’s why Merz quickly faced a backlash from both inside and outside the CDU, and on Monday morning he used Twitter to backpedal. “Our decision stands: There will not be any cooperation with the AfD, also not at the communal level,” he tweeted.
But the damage was done. Merz hopes to become Germany’s chancellor in 2025, and his biggest challenge in defeating the governing left-wing coalition will be to hold together a party in which western state members treat the AfD as untouchable while those in eastern states treat it as a fact of life. With contradictory statements within a matter of hours, he’s not off to a strong start.
AfD holds "Future for Germany" rally in Erfurt.
Why is Germany’s far right surging?
For extremely obvious reasons, it’s always a little unsettling when the far-right is having a good moment in German politics.
That’s exactly what’s happening now as the avowedly anti-immigrant and Euroskeptic Alternative for Deutschland Party, known as AfD, is now neck-and-neck with the Social Democrats, the party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The AfD, which is polling at 19% (to the SPD’s 20%), is closing in on becoming the country’s second most popular political faction. The Christian Democratic Union Party still holds the top spot at 27%.
What explains AfD’s recent upward trajectory, and what does it tell us about the state of German politics 18 months after former Chancellor Angela Merkel left the stage, ending 16 years at the helm?
AfD’s raison d'être. Founded in 2013, the group’s main shtick at the time was agitating against the European Union’s planned bailout of indebted countries after the eurozone crisis. The founders wanted to ditch the single market and bring back the German Deutschmark. (Spoiler: It didn’t happen.)
But when millions of refugees starting streaming into Germany in 2015 in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war, the AfD morphed into an anti-immigrant – and anti-Islam – party and has since called for the German constitution to gut the right to seek asylum.
Evoking outrage has been par for the course for AfD party stalwarts, and in some instances, it’s perhaps the entire point. Consider that the AfD leader of the central state of Thuringia has called for Holocaust memorials to be taken down, while former party leader Frauke Petry once said that refugees should be prevented from crossing into Germany … by using armed force.
It’s in former East Germany – where grievances about economic inequality and second-class citizenship have festered since the end of the Cold War – that AfD’s populist, ethnocentric messaging has gained the most traction.
Still, when Germans last went to the polls in Sept. 2021, AfD was polling at around 10% on average, and the far-right group is now reaping nearly double that at 19%, having seen a four-point bump over the past 12 weeks alone.
“This is not a blip, and not some sort of short-term thing,” says Jan Techau, Germany director at Eurasia Group and former speechwriter to German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. “We've seen buildup over some time, and now it seems like AfD is solidifying.”
So what explains this seismic shift?
Economic misery and the blame game. Anti-establishment parties almost always get a boost when the economy is hurting. Stubbornly high inflation over the past year – in large part due to the war in Ukraine – has provided an opening for the AfD’s populist message to resonate not only with the extremist right but also with disillusioned conservatives and those opposed to the status quo.
Indeed, although inflation has begun to ease, food prices are still up 15% year-on-year, an enormous strain for working-class Germans.
What’s more, that economic instability has coincided with a rise in asylum-seekers trying to reach the European Union this year by boat – from South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa – has presented the perfect boogeyman for populists and nativists across the bloc, including in Germany.
Consider that in the first four months of this year, initial asylum applications in Germany increased by 78% compared to the same period in 2022. This is in addition to the more than 1 million Ukrainians who’ve crossed into Germany since the war began, though these migrants don’t engender the same national scorn.
While public support for arming Ukraine is at 57%, AfD’s recent rise in popularity suggests that its argument that sanctions against Russia hurt Germany’s economic interests is resonating with at least some voters.
Many AfD backers are “disenfranchised conservatives who see no other alternative because they feel the mainstream conservatives have become too liberal” and aren’t responsive to their bread-and-butter needs, Techau says.
The traffic light turns green. The German coalition government that came into office in 2021 is a varied one. The three-party coalition, the first in Germany’s modern history, includes Scholz’s SPD, the progressive, climate-conscious Greens, and the business-friendly fiscal hawks of the Free Democratic Party. The coalition is known as the “traffic light” owing to the colors of its three members.
With the Greens heading the economy portfolio, climate reform has been at the forefront of the government's domestic agenda, even more so since Russia invaded Ukraine and the EU made a collective pledge to kick its Russian natural gas habit.
Accordingly, the government has sought to slow the use of oil and gas heating systems by 2024, mandating that new heating systems are powered by at least 65% of renewable sources. The government's push to install heat pumps in homes and offices – a very expensive undertaking – has resulted in a massive pushback that the AfD has naturally used to its advantage. (AfD parliamentary leader Alice Weidel has called the government plan a “heating massacre.”)
Techau says that failure to sell this policy to voters has perhaps been the government’s biggest downfall. “When they started to legislate, they were quite ambitious and weren't able to explain it in a way that convinced people,” he says, adding that “people started to react quite negatively to this.”
Extremism abhors a power vacuum. The departure of Merkel after almost two decades at the top left a pair of sensible brogues that no successor has been able to fill. While her CDU/CSU remains the most popular, its support has certainly been slipping since 2020. As a result, some conservatives susceptible to economic populism have been lost to the AfD in recent months.
Tachau says the fact that current CDU leader Friedrich Merz is very unpopular has been a boon for AfD. “He’s not seen as a possible future chancellor, and that means that a good number of voters will go elsewhere,” he says.
This dynamic is exacerbated by the fact that Scholz’s SPD never had that much of an edge to begin with – winning just 10 more seats than the CDU in 2021. Perceptions of Scholz as unable to control infighting with his coalition over how to roll out domestic policies have only added fuel to the fire.
“The ideological leanings and the clumsy craftsmanship of Scholz's coalition, especially on migration and energy, have massively aggravated the situation,” Techau says, adding that while “they are not to be blamed alone, as much of the anger is structural and has built up over a long time, the coalition's performance over the last 18 months made the whole situation boil over.”
Could AfD really rule? All of Germany’s major political parties have committed to putting up a Brandmauer – a firewall – between them and the AfD, meaning that they have agreed not to sit with the formerly fringe group in any governing coalition. But if the far-right party gets more and more popular, could that change by the next election?
For now, Techau doesn’t think so. “In Germany, the ghosts of the past are always quite present,” he says.
However, even though the AfD could be kept out of a government by other major parties forming a broad (and unstable) coalition, that too would only feed into the AfD’s narrative of ostracization and otherness.
Indeed, such a move “would only turn into a shallow mechanism to keep them out,” Techau says. His takeaway? “No matter which way you do it, you're doing it wrong.”
Bundweswehr logo on German soldiers' uniforms.
In a historic shift, Germany decides to bolster armed forces
The shockwaves from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have hit Germany hard. For much of the post-World War II era, change in German politics, when it occurred, tended to be gradual. But the horror of war in nearby Ukraine has triggered an abrupt and momentous change of German foreign and defense policies. After years of starving its armed forces of resources and of acquiescence to aggressive behavior by Russia, Europe’s economic powerhouse has announced accelerated plans to beef up its military and backed crippling sanctions against Russia. We spoke to Eurasia Group expert Naz Masraff to get more insight into this dramatic shift and its implications.
What are the most important changes announced?
In a reversal of a longstanding policy against delivering arms to conflict zones, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany will send anti-tank weapons, surface-to-air missiles, and armored vehicles to Ukraine. He also pledged to raise Germany’s defense spending above the 2%-of-GDP level expected of NATO members and to create a €100 billion fund to jumpstart the effort. In the economic realm, Scholz froze the Nord Stream 2 pipeline meant to transport Russian natural gas to Germany and signed on to an effort by the US and other European countries to unplug Russia from the SWIFT network used for international banking transactions.
Why now?
A toughening of attitudes toward Russia in recent years within German media, think tanks, and its political class helped pave the way for change. Then came the invasion of Ukraine, which took Berlin by surprise. As other Western countries quickly pressed for punitive actions against Moscow, Berlin dithered. It initially resisted, for example, the proposal to disconnect Russian banks from SWIFT, prompting visits from the leaders of Poland and Lithuania to urge a change of course. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted that he came “to shake Germany's conscience so that they decide on firm and crushing sanctions.” The drama over SWIFT was likely the tipping point, leading the Scholz government to conclude it had to do something big to save its image internationally as well as at home, where there has been an outpouring of public support for Ukraine.
Why has Germany been so hesitant to stand up to Russia?
For decades, Germany’s so-called Ostpolitik (Eastern Policy) formed the basis for its dealings with, first, the Soviet Union, and later with Russia. The policy held that peaceful relations and deepening commercial ties would be sufficient to avert the threat of conflict. Germans widely believe it helped bring down the Berlin Wall in 1989, and until recently thought it could moderate the actions of an increasingly aggressive Russian president. Even after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014 and then sparked a separatist conflict in the east of the country, Germany continued to develop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would have greatly strengthened its ties with Russia. The invasion of Ukraine delivered a rude awakening on the effectiveness of this approach.
What will be the implications of the shift in German policy?
The changes signal that Germany is transforming itself from a country that viewed itself as a “civilian power” and ceded leadership on the international stage to others (usually France) into one that is more assertive and has more normal defense policies for a country of its size. The commitment to raise its defense spending to 2% of GDP will go down well with the US and NATO, and given Germany’s economic heft, could eventually translate into a much more significant military role for Berlin in the alliance. Scholz has already outlined ambitions to develop new weapons systems such as fighter jets and tanks.
What has been the public response in Germany?
Defense spending has traditionally been a very low priority for the German public. But a Forsa poll taken shortly after Scholz announced his plans showed that a remarkable 78% of respondents supported the €100 billion package and the new plans to strengthen the armed forces. Similarly, public opinion on weapons deliveries to Ukraine shifted dramatically, with 78% supporting them compared to 15% in a late January survey by Ipsos. But the polls represent a snapshot in time. War in Europe has become a reality, and the public is concerned about Putin’s broader intentions and the implications for Germany’s security. But pacifist instincts are deeply rooted in Germany’s post-World War II psyche and could re-emerge over time.
With his bold new plans, is Scholz drawing comparisons to his predecessor, Angela Merkel?
Though Merkel lead the EU on many important issues, her leadership didn’t extend to foreign policy. When Russia was massing troops on the Ukrainian border earlier this year, Scholz appeared likely to continue this approach as he let French President Emmanuel Macron do much of the talking with Putin. Then, to everyone’s surprise, he abruptly reversed decades of foreign and defense policy and signaled that Germany wishes to play a much more active international role going forward. Most recently, Scholz met in Ankara with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss Russian aggression, with the German leader noting that "there can only be a diplomatic solution."
Biden & Putin will continue Ukraine talks; Germany’s new chancellor
Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Europe:
What came out of the video conference between Presidents Biden and Putin?
Well, that's a very good question. We don't know, but they agreed to continue talking about the issues that Mr. Putin backed up by the threat of an invasion of Ukraine has put on the table. There is somewhat of a disquiet in Europe over that, but Biden has said that there's not going to be any talks about Ukraine without Ukraine at the table. This is a story that will continue for quite some time.
Is Germany's new chancellor Olaf Scholz going to fill the power vacuum in Europe?
I'm not quite sure there's a power vacuum, but clearly we have a new government in place here in Berlin and they are busy traveling now to Paris, to Brussels, to Warsaw to reconnect to allies and friends. Olaf Scholz will make his first appearance in a wider stage at the European Summit next week. I think there's going to be a lot of continuity in German politics and a lot of attention in Europe now shifts to the French presidential election in April of next year. First round, that might be a somewhat more dramatic affair.
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- Russia makes unrealistic proposals as Ukraine buildup continues - GZERO Media ›
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attends a news conference in the Federal Chancellery following the video conference with the country's 16 state leaders on the surge in the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases, in Berlin, Germany, December 9, 2021.
Enter Olaf — can he keep Germany’s traffic light blinking?
As of this week, for the first time since Gwen Stefani was topping the charts with Hollaback Girl, Germany is not run by a person named Angela.
Olaf Scholz — the pragmatic, robotic, determined leader of the center-left SPD party — now holds the reins of Europe’s largest economy.
But he also leads a three-party coalition, the first in Germany’s modern history, with the progressively, climate conscious Greens and the business-friendly fiscal hawks of the Free Democrats party. The coalition is known as the “traffic light” owing to the colors of its three members.
Here are a few immediate and longer-term challenges for Scholz.
His first big test is COVID. Germany is currently in the throes of its worst surge since the onset of the pandemic. Between the upcoming Christmas holiday and uncertainty about the omicron variant, Scholz has his work cut out for him. So far he has not announced any new society-wide lockdowns or restrictions. But with Germany’s vaccination rate of 70 percent now an EU laggard, he’s embraced a broad vaccine mandate and wants to get 30 million jabs done by the end of the year.
Foreign policy: Russia on day one. Scholz comes into office right as tensions around Ukraine are soaring again. He will quickly have to stake out a position towards Moscow that satisfies German industries, which rely on Russian markets and energy, but that also reflects the views of the Greens, Russia hawks who see the Kremlin as a menace both to the climate and to democracy. With the Greens’ leader Annalena Baerbock as foreign minister, this is going to be a tough balance to strike.
A crucial near-term decision for Scholz is whether he is willing to include suspension of the Nord Stream 2 Russian gas pipeline project as part of a package of German sanctions meant to deter Russian aggression against Ukraine… at a time of sky-high gas prices.
Going green without getting into the red. Scholz’s government has pledged a massive push on the climate front, promising to phase out coal entirely by 2030, eight years earlier than originally planned, and to double the renewable share of electricity generation to 80 percent by then as well.
These goals are practically existential for the Greens, but getting there will require massive investment — where’s the money going to come from? Scholz has already pledged to reimpose constitutional limits on debt, and the Free Democrats, who control his finance ministry, are opposed to raising taxes.
A bigger question: Can Scholz make social democrats cool again? The SDP victory was something of a stunner for a party that had seemed, just months ago, like it was on the brink of extinction. What’s more, across Europe traditional labor-oriented parties have suffered in recent years.
Now Scholz has a chance to prove that the traditional European center left has some fight in it, at a time when the right — in both its centrist and populist versions — has been defining the landscape for the last decade. Scholz believes the SPD can reconnect with working-class voters — and his coalition’s pledge to raise Germany’s minimum wage for about 10 million people is an immediate part of that.
About a third of EU member states are currently run by social democrats of one stripe or another. They will be watching to see if Scholz can use the bloc’s largest economy as a showcase for the center-left’s bonafides after a long time in the wilderness.
The unknown unknown: the next crisis. Will it be immigration? A terror attack? A financial meltdown? A political scandal? Scholz’s predecessor didn’t come into office as a crisis manager, but she sure left as one. How the new German chancellor holds together his somewhat oddball coalition under unforeseen pressures could prove decisive.What We’re Watching: Biden and Putin chat, Scholz takes the reins in Germany, Remain in Mexico returns, Pécresse enters the French fray, Suu Kyi learns her fate
World War III or nah? US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are set to speak by phone on Tuesday, as the crisis surrounding Ukraine gets dicier by the day. Russia has massed more than 100,000 troops along its border with the country, and the US is warning that Putin is gearing up to invade soon, though the underlying intel isn’t public. No one is quite sure what Putin’s up to with this stunt. Is he trying to pressure Kyiv into moving ahead with the lopsided (but probably best possible) Minsk peace accords of 2015? Or is the Kremlin seeking a broader NATO commitment not to expand further? Or does Putin actually want to invade Ukraine? Either way, Biden has his work cut out for him. Putin is clearly more comfortable risking lives and money to preserve a sphere of influence in Ukraine than the West is, so the US president has to be careful: don’t set out any red lines that NATO isn’t willing to back, but also don’t push the situation into a broader war that no one (ideally) wants.
Exit Angela, enter omicron. Social Democrat Olaf Scholz will officially take over this week as German Chancellor, leading a coalition with the Greens and the business-friendly Free Democrats. His government has already laid out plans to accelerate Germany's transition to carbon neutrality, to bolster European sovereignty in the face of rising challenges from Russia and China, and to rein in fiscal spending – not only in Germany but across Europe – as the pandemic recedes. But one immediate challenge is that the pandemic isn't actually receding yet. Scholz will take office just as cases are surging. The current 7-day average of new cases in Germany is more than twice as high as the previous peak which was a year ago, before vaccines were rolled out. With the evidently more transmissible omicron variant already spreading, Scholz has said he favors making vaccines obligatory, even as blowback against mandates has been rising in Europe.
"Remain in Mexico" policy is back. The US and Mexico several days ago reached a deal to restart the controversial “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires that migrants seeking entry to the US wait south of the border while their asylum applications are processed. The policy has forced thousands of asylum-seekers to spend months – or even years – in rundown Mexican border towns where crime, rape, and kidnapping for ransom are rife. As part of the new deal, unaccompanied minors will be allowed to wait for asylum rulings in the US, and the Biden administration has agreed to improve human rights conditions at the border, including by providing migrants with COVID-19 vaccines. Upon coming into office, Biden pledged to take a more "humane" approach to migration than his predecessor, but in August the Supreme Court ruled that he had to follow “Remain in Mexico.” He has also been criticized by rights groups for failing to undo the Trump administration’s use of a public health rule to keep migrants out. The new agreement between Mexico and the US comes just days after Washington pledged to help Central America deal with the root causes of migration.
France’s right-leaning election. Valérie Pécresse, a minister in former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s government, won a primary on Saturday to lead France’s conservative Les Republicains party in next year’s presidential election. Pécresse is the first woman to head the party of Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac, and is hoping to reinvigorate a party that’s become mostly irrelevant in French politics as anti-establishment sentiment grips the electorate. But Pécresse – a mainstream conservative – has her work cut out for her in an election where far-right firebrands Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour are holding their own in the polls. President Emmanuel Macron is still five points ahead of Le Pen, who is currently in second place, and would reap about a quarter of the vote if the April elections were held today. But Pécresse’s entry into the race could cause some trouble for Macron. He has tried to paint himself both as a political outsider and as a middle-of-the-road liberal but he is broadly seen as a wishy-washy ideological chameleon. Macron could now be forced to veer further to the right to attract voters who might resonate with Pécresse’s tough-on-immigration and pro-business agenda, particularly amid fears that the omicron variant could force Macron to re-impose unpopular lockdowns.
Suu Kyi's first verdict handed down. On Monday, a Myanmar court sentenced deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi to four years in prison for breaking COVID rules and incitement. Suu Kyi faces 11 charges in total, including corruption and leaking state secrets – which could land her in prison for more than 100 years. The UN has said the charges are a sham meant to secure the military junta’s hold on power. To date, the trial has been closed to the media, while Suu Kyi’s lawyers have also been banned from making public statements. Suu Kyi, who is seen by many in Myanmar as the only politician that can steer the country’s full democratic transition, has not been seen in public since the coup. Since then, the military has been accused of human rights violations for cracking down on peaceful anti-junta demonstrators, resulting in at least 1,200 deaths. Just this past weekend, the military rammed vehicles into a group of demonstrators, injuring dozens. The UN has warned that armed groups are training in jungles to overthrow the military, and that the country is on the cusp of full-blown civil war.
What We're Watching: Angela out, omicron in
Exit Angela, enter omicron. Social Democrat Olaf Scholz will officially take over this week as German Chancellor, leading a coalition with the Greens and the business-friendly Free Democrats. His government has already laid out plans to accelerate Germany's transition to carbon neutrality, to bolster European sovereignty in the face of rising challenges from Russia and China, and to rein in fiscal spending – not only in Germany but across Europe – as the pandemic recedes. But one immediate challenge is that the pandemic isn't actually receding yet. Scholz will take office just as cases are surging. The current 7-day average of new cases in Germany is more than twice as high as the previous peak which was a year ago, before vaccines were rolled out. With the evidently more transmissible omicron variant already spreading, Scholz has said he favors making vaccines obligatory, even as blowback against mandates has been rising in Europe.
What We're Watching: Angela Merkel's punk rock farewell, Iran nuclear talks resume
Angela Merkel's punk rock farewell. Although she doesn't officially step down as German Chancellor until next week, Angela Merkel's sendoff took place on Thursday night in Berlin, with the traditional Grosser Zapfenstreich — a musical aufweidersehen, replete with torches and a military band. By custom, the honoree gets to choose three songs for the band to play. Among Merkel's otherwise staid choices was a total curveball: You Forgot the Colour Film, a 1974 rock hit by fellow East German Nina Hagen, a renowned punk rocker. The song, a parody bit about a man who takes the singer on vacation but has only black-and-white film in his camera, was understood as a dig at the drabness of life in the East. We're listening to the tune, and... digging it, kind of — but we still prefer Merkel's own Kraftwerk-inspired farewell song from Puppet Regime. Eins, zwei, drei, it's time to say goodbye...
Tehran’s list of demands. Days into the resumption of nuclear talks in Vienna, Iran has a proposal for moving towards a new nuclear agreement. The list of Iranian “demands” likely includes the removal of US economic sanctions to get the ball rolling, which has so far been a non-starter for Washington. This development comes as the International Atomic Energy Agency said this week that Iran continues to enrich uranium at close to weapons-grade levels, including at the contentious Fordo site, which, under the terms of 2015 deal, is to be used only for research and development purposes. When asked Thursday about the state of negotiations, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Iran’s recent behavior doesn’t inspire much confidence, but that the next few days would be crucial to move things forward. The Europeans are shuttling back and forth between the Iranians and the Americans, who aren't participating in the talks directly yet. And time is of the essence: according to some estimates, Tehran is already just weeks away from having enough fissile material for a single nuclear weapon.