Germany, moderate parties besieged by right-wing and left-wing extremism

The Cdu-Csu union has regained ground after collapsing in the lost 2021 elections, but is still struggling to fly high, travelling around 30% in the polls, a far cry from Angela Merkel's 40% golden age. The 30% does not allow for the formation of a Grand Coalition with Cdu-Csu and Social Democrats. At the moment, according to predictions and with respect to the 2019 vote, in the European elections on 9 June the Christian Democrats should remain stable at 30%: if they go further, to 31%, they will have something to celebrate. In 2014 they reached 35.3 per cent of the vote, in 2019 around 30 per cent.

The parties of the semaphore coalition Spd, Greens, Fdp, a first for a three-party government at the federal level, lost consensus while leading the country during multiple crises (pandemic and post-pandemic, Russia's war in Ukraine, Hamas-Israel conflict, energy shock and soaring inflation, ECB monetary tightening, derisking from China). It remains to be seen whether the Social Democrats and Greens will be able to overtake AfD in the Europeans and still remain around 15% (in 2014 and 2019 respectively Spd took 27.3% and 15.8% while the Greens took 10.7% and 20.5%).

All major parties, with the exception of AfD, are actually expected to fall in the European elections.

The Social Democrats are indicated by some pollsters at 14%, thus worsening the European vote by 15.8% in 2019, the lowest in the party's history.

The SPD will not be the first party in the European elections, as it was in the 2021 federal elections, because it will be outclassed by Cdu-Csu. But it is not clear who will be the second party to vote for the European Parliament. AfD has been the second largest party in Germany for about a year in the polls measuring voter approval for the next federal elections: after peaking at 22% between the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, the far-right party is now settling at around 16% nationwide: very close to the SPD and the Greens. And it is not certain that it will also reach 16% on a European scale.

The Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, after almost doubling from 10.7 per cent in 2014 to a spectacular 20.5 per cent in 2019, should manage to reach 15 per cent in this election round: a good result, because it is close to the Spd and AfD, confirming that Germany is 'green'.

The Liberals, after returning above 5% in the 2019 European elections, fear they will fall below this threshold again in June. On the far left front, there is news: the arrival of the BSW party, founded last January by the charismatic Sahra Wagenknecht. It could take 7%, making Die Linke fall to 3%.

The only party that is expected to do better in the European vote than in 2014 and 2019 is AfD: paradoxically the only seriously anti-European party in Germany. If the polls are confirmed and AfD reaches around 15 per cent on 9 June, it will double the 7.1 per cent of 2014 and exceed 11 per cent in 2019: in a way, it can sing victory.

But the statements by Maximilian Krah, the AfD's leader in the European parliamentary elections, who in an interview with Repubblica and the Financial Times about the SS said 'that they are not all automatically criminals', have made the 'AfD' case explode with serious repercussions for the future of the party, at least in the EU.

The bureau of the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, the most right-wing group in the European Parliament, decided on 23 May to expel all nine AfD MEPs. The decision was taken after Rassemblement National founder Marine Le Pen and Lega leader Matteo Salvini said they no longer wanted to be part of an MEP group together with AfD: the stance of RN and Lega came after Krah's statements on SS.

Krah meanwhile, after the collapse of the party's reputation caused by the contents of the interview, has been forced to resign from the AfD leadership, from the federal executive committee, and will no longer be able to participate in the European election campaign: but the damage has been done and may be irreparable.

In addition, investigations are ongoing in Germany against Maximilian Krah because of his relations with China and Russia. It seems that one of his employees passed on internal information from the European Parliament to the Chinese secret service. Krah dismissed the employee, but said he knew nothing about his relations with China.

Krah is also accused of allegedly being involved in Russian propaganda in Europe and of accepting money to do this: he denies it.

The statements on the Waffen-SS by the way are not the first incident between Le Pen and AfD: they are rather the 'straw that broke the camel's back', according to German political commentators.

A serious problem had previously arisen over the use of the term 'remigration'. While AfD used this term (which means wanting to expel citizens from Germany who do not have 100 per cent German origins), Le Pen distanced herself with negative comments on remigration.

Party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla are flaunting confidence. They are looking forward 'optimistically to election night and the following days'. And they reassured their voters in this way: 'we are therefore confident that we will have reliable partners at our side in the new legislature'.

The moderate parties in Germany, encouraged by heartfelt public appeals launched by some 30 large listed German companies, are all working to stop the anti-democratic drift.

Also putting a spoke in AfD's wheels is the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), the body that oversees the constitution and works to safeguard democratic principles: it has the power to declare AfD outlawed. AfD responds blow by blow, turns to any state court to appeal, poses as a victim of the system.

One does not hear much about Europe in the election campaign. But one should not be misled: this does not mean that Germany is dominated by anti-Europeanism. Quite the contrary. With the exception of the supporters of the extreme right and extreme left parties, all other large and small parties orbiting in the centre-right and centre-left area are distinctly pro-European. Europe, whether Eurozone or EU, is not in the least questioned by a large part of the electorate: so much so that the main parties, in their programmes for the European elections, sponsor the enlargement of the EU to the Baltic States, Ukraine and Moldova, advocate the mechanism of majority voting and not unanimity to speed up decision-making.

The issues that are holding sway in the election campaign in Germany, therefore, are transversal, national and European at the same time: more moderation in immigration, more spending on infrastructure, digital and defence, but without sending public accounts into a tailspin and without common debt; maintaining ecological policies for the protection of the environment; maintaining the goals of the green transition, but without ultra-costly acceleration and destabilising ambitions.