When Germany’s 59 million voters go to the polls on Sunday it will be not so much to elect a government as to pick an opposition. While the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), on 30 per cent in the polls, appear likely to take the chancellorship from Olaf Scholz and the Social Democrats (SPD), most attention will focus on the performance of far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD).
The key question is whether the party can push its second-place 20 per cent poll share up five percentage points, meaning its leader Alice Weidel could create parliamentary problems for the government. There will be no seats in coalition for AfD: cooperation with them remains taboo, although the CDU, rattled by its rise, last month controversially leant on its parliamentary support for a vote restricting immigration.
Rivals accused CDU leader Friedrich Merz of “opening the doors to hell” – echoes, they said, of conservative pacts with the Nazis that ended pre-War democracy. It prompted widespread anti-AfD protests. So far, neither the supposed breakthrough in acceptability on the right nor the bizarre endorsement from Trump acolyte Elon Musk seem to have given the AfD its desired extra poll boost.
The AfD successfully wrote the election’s central narrative on immigration, effectively accusing Scholz of being responsible for a number of brutal attacks involving asylum seekers. The SPD, which would have preferred to fight on the lacklustre economic front, had no real response.
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Merz’s “Agenda 2030″ promises to lower taxes for companies and households, “dismantle” bureaucracy, and foster investment in R&D, a classic reversion to the CDU’s centre-right roots that also involves unpicking green regulations and cutting welfare benefits.
In a move that will be welcomed by other European capitals, long frustrated by Germany’s economic parsimoniousness, Merz has also raised the possibility – specifically to raise defence spending – of changing the constitutional requirement capping Germany’s structural deficit at 0.35 per cent of GDP.
Merz’s centre-right programme, however, will make attempts to build a majority coalition more difficult. The maths will be complicated by uncertainty about how many minor parties will pass the five per cent vote threshold to get into the Bundestag. Should he opt to lead a minority government, surviving on a vote by vote basis with the support of the SPD and Greens, Germany faces the prospect of more years of drift.
As the EU faces a series of challenges, from facing down Russia over Ukraine, to responding to China’s rise, to transforming the union’s defensive capabilities, Germany’s leadership is needed. But this election could make it difficult to form a strong government. Much is at stake.
