German election campaigns usually have a sense of quiet inevitability about them. Accurate polls long in advance give a good idea of who will be chancellor, and with which coalition partners.
So it was until last week, when it seemed all but certain that Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which has been leading in the polls for three years, would form the next government when the country votes in federal elections this month. The centre-right party, formerly led by Angela Merkel, has been buoyed by the intense unpopularity of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) and their coalition partners. Much campaign debate had focused on the dire state of the economy, fertile ground for Merz’s liberals.
But Merz’s rash decision to use the support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to pass a resolution on immigration has split his party, triggered mass protests nationwide—and potentially cost him a majority in parliament.
Merz argued that two recent attacks in Bavaria and Magdeburg, allegedly by an asylum seeker and a refugee, demonstrated the need for a harsher position on immigration. He tabled a resolution in parliament calling for asylum seekers to be turned back at the border, making it clear that the motion should be accepted even if it could only pass with AfD support. The resolution passed on 29th January—the first in the postwar Bundestag to have been accepted because of far-right votes. (A second resolution to turn the first into a law failed narrowly.)
The move immediately triggered recriminations from across the political spectrum. Merz was accused of weakening the “firewall” which prevents cooperation with the far right; because of its Nazi past, this convention is far stronger in Germany than in other countries. In a highly unusual intervention into contemporary politics, former CDU chancellor Merkel called it “wrong”. Over 150,000 demonstrators gathered in cities across the country at the weekend, for the first time protesting against the CDU while rallying against the AfD.
Merz’s gamble is clear. With the AfD on course to come second in the 23rd February election, he judged there was more to gain by winking at the electorate than there was to lose by chipping away at the firewall. In effect, Merz was telling voters who are considering casting their ballot for the AfD in protest over immigration that he is listening to them.
“A right decision does not become wrong just because the wrong people agree. It remains right,” Merz told parliament shortly before the Bundestag vote.
Merz was also showing that he may be open to working with the far right on a case-by-case basis in the next parliament. The CDU leader is judging, in essence, that Germany is not so different from the other European countries where safeguards against cooperation with the far right have weakened. From France to Austria, the taboo is now virtually non-existent.
But his bet may not pay off. Sarah Wagner, a political scientist at Queen’s University Belfast, told me the nationwide protests and sense of collective shock that greeted Merz’s gamble on the AfD show that the breach of the longstanding norm matters deeply to many Germans. Merz, who had previously pledged not to work with the AfD, appears untrustworthy and inconsistent. Stung by the backlash, at his party conference this week he claimed there would be “no cooperation, no tolerance, nothing” with the far right.
At least one poll conducted since the 29th January vote shows a small drop in support for the CDU, with left-wing parties gaining slightly. It is not yet clear whether this is an outlier or indicative of a prolonged negative reaction.
Moreover, signalling an openness to working with the AfD risks jeopardising post-election coalition talks—always necessary in Germany, where no party ever governs alone. The Green and SPD leaders—the CDU’s most likely coalition partners—have harshly criticised Merz’s actions. As much as 50 per cent of SPD voters and 75 per cent of Green voters oppose passing laws with AfD support, according to Insa polling.
Jens Zimmermann, an SPD member of the Bundestag, told me that Merz’s actions would “definitely” make it more difficult for him to accept a coalition with the CDU. “How can we vote for a chancellor after he did something like that?”
If there is a winner in this saga, it is the AfD. The party is, justifiably, claiming a double victory, having used its MPs to pass a vote for the first time since its founding in 2013, and claiming that its strength forced the CDU to adopt hardline anti-immigration policies.
The AfD’s seemingly inexorable rise comes even as national leader Alice Weidel echoes the language of the most extremist wing of the party. Weidel has publicly embraced “remigration”—understood by many party activists to mean the deportation of people of non-German ethnic backgrounds. American billionaire Elon Musk has offered vocal support to the AfD. He told a party rally in Germany that Germans needed to stop feeling guilty for “the sins of their parents” mere days after twice making a gesture strikingly similar to a Nazi salute at a rally on Donald Trump’s inauguration day.
By courting a party which openly espouses ethnic nationalism, Merz risks alienating moderate voters who still believe that mainstream parties should reject the far right at any cost. He has suddenly made both the result of the election and subsequent negotiations more unpredictable. Outcomes which just days ago appeared unimaginable—up to and including a minority CDU government supported by the AfD—now seem far less remote.
