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In the German city of Karlsruhe, a police investigation has just been launched into the distribution of 30,000 flyers designed to resemble deportation plane tickets, many of which were placed in the letterboxes of immigrants. Organised by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD), the stunt recalled a similar malicious exercise by the neo-Nazi National Democratic party (NDP) in 2013. The difference is that while the NDP – now renamed the Homeland – is a fringe movement that has never crossed the 5% threshold of votes necessary to enter the Bundestag, the AfD is now running second in polls, at about 21%.
The booming popularity of a xenophobic party officially suspected of anti-constitutional extremism is just the starkest signal of how much is at stake in next month’s snap election in Germany. A national poll in Europe’s largest economy will always be of deep continental significance. But as campaigning begins in earnest, there are grounds beyond the issue of immigration for judging this to be one of the country’s most consequential contests since the second world war.
Speaking in the industrial city of Bochum this week, the politician most likely to become the next chancellor explicitly signalled his intention to row back on climate goals. With the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) sitting on a substantial lead in the polls, its leader, Friedrich Merz, expressed scepticism over green targets and pledged to downgrade climate priorities in a strategy for renewing German industry. As Brussels steadily waters down its own Green Deal, the impact of Berlin following suit would look uncomfortably like a tipping point in a continent that has liked to vaunt its global leadership on the issue.
In relation to left-right arguments over how to kickstart growth in struggling European economies, Germany’s election will also be a seminal event. Mr Merz’s broader plan – as befits a former BlackRock executive – is a form of reheated economic liberalism, combining deregulation with significant tax and spending cuts, including deep reductions to the welfare budget. He has also indicated a reluctance to modify self-defeatingly strict limits on government borrowing, disagreement over which led to the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s fractious Social Democrat-led coalition.
A full-blooded shrinking of the state would almost certainly deepen hardship, driving those most affected toward populist movements on both the left and right. But the enactment of such a programme is made less likely by Mr Merz’s refusal to countenance entering into coalition with the AfD. Instead, the election could see the CDU lead another “grand coalition”, with Mr Scholz’s SPD as a junior partner.
A centrist fudge would be more palatable than Mr Merz unchained. But as Germany seeks to recast its economic model in a new geopolitical era, it needs a bold, fiscally empowered state rather than a shrunken one. Mr Scholz is offering something of the kind, including through a proposed €100bn infrastructure fund. But having collapsed his own deeply unpopular government by engineering a snap election, his chances of re-election seem slim.
As the AfD’s disgraceful bullying tactics in Karlsruhe darkly illustrate, extreme attitudes are increasingly finding an audience in the context of economic anxiety and stagnation. A robust counteroffensive from mainstream parties in the west is overdue. Sadly, with the stakes alarmingly high, it seems doubtful Germany will lead the way.
