Germany’s far-right AfD party has signed off on its manifesto before next month’s critical election, proposing a series of deeply controversial policies on everything from migration to education as the campaign for a new government in Europe’s powerhouse formally kicked off.
The party, founded in 2013, endorsed the far-right concept of “re-migration” into its programme, threatening the mass deportation of migrants if it came to power.
The phrase, long used in far-right, so-called identitarian circles, gained in notoriety after it was the focus of a secret meeting between rightwing extremists, neo-Nazis and AfD officials in November 2023, which sparked widespread protests across the country when it came to light.
The Alternative für Deutschland’s two-day convention in the eastern city of Riesa was held up by mass protests and blockades by over 10,000 demonstrators, which considerably delayed its start. A heavy police presence held back demonstrators and guarded delegates as they entered the meeting. A left-wing politician said he had been hit in the face and knocked to the ground by police. Police said they were examining a video of the incident.
New polls showed the AfD, parts of which have been classified as far-right extremist by German domestic intelligence, to have increased its poll rating to 22%, putting it behind only the CDU/CSU alliance, which dropped a point to 30%.
On Saturday the Social Democrats of Chancellor Olaf Scholz formally renewed their nomination of him as their main candidate, despite some misgivings within the party as to whether he is the right person. The SPD currently stands relatively unchanged on between 14% and 16%.
The Greens, which held their convention in November, increased their share by 1% on Sunday to 15%. Newcomers BSW, which sells itself as offering “left conservatism”, held its party convention in Bonn and was expected to agree on its manifesto by the end of Sunday. The party is hovering between 4% and 6%, and in danger of failing to get the 5% needed to enter parliament.
The same applies to the far-left Die Linke, (3%-4%) as well as to the pro-business FDP (4%). It was the expulsion from government by Scholz of its leader and Germany’s finance minister, Christian Lindner, which led to the collapse last month of the three-party coalition and paved the way for an early election on 23 February.
The AfD formally nominated its co-leader Alice Weidel as its chancellor candidate on Saturday. Party delegates held up heart-shaped placards in the party’s trademark blue, bearing the slogan: “Alice for Germany”, which critics said deliberately lent on slogans from the Nazi era.
Among its manifesto promises is the abolition of the euro and a return to the Deutschmark, the reintroduction of military conscription and widespread reforms to the education system and media financing.
At its conference it voted in favour of disbanding its youth wing, the Junge Alternative, which has been classified as far-right extremist and is considered more radical and further to the right than the mother party, and replacing it with a new organisation. The proposal has been highly controversial among members.
The AfD has little chance of getting into government, as the mainstream parties have all ruled out coalescing or cooperating with it. However, after the collapse of coalition talks in neighbouring Austria, which has left Herbert Kickl the head of the far-right Freedom party at the helm to form a new government, the AfD has referred to a “firewall” which “risks trapping the main parties in the conflagration”.
Weidel, and the party as a whole, have appeared emboldened after an endorsement earlier this month by the US billionaire Elon Musk, who claimed on X that only the AfD can save Germany. Last week he and Weidel held a 75-minute conversation on X, in which Musk invited Weidel to explain her party to the wider world, but which morphed into a wide-ranging fireside chat on everything from Musk’s plans to put people on Mars within four years, his love of solar energy, whether either believed in God, and Weidel’s conviction – which drew accusations from historians of revisionism – that Hitler had been wrongly framed as a fascist.
Although often anti-American in the past, the very notion that the AfD now has a personal connection to the new US administration led to its MEP Marc Jongen to propose the motion that the party is “committed to improving relations with the USA, whose new administration heralds the end of climate ideology and wokeness”. This clause, which was accepted by the majority of delegates was effectively a thank you, Jongen said, to Musk, “without naming his name”, and acknowledged the “sea change” going on in the US, “from which the AfD and Germany is profiting”.
Meanwhile in Bonn, the BSW, which was established only a year ago by former communist politician Sahra Wagenknecht and made swift gains in European parliamentary and state elections, laid out its plans in a 39-page paper entitled: Our Country Deserves Better. Among its proposals are reported to be a complete withdrawal of US troops and long-range weapons from German soil, and a refusal to allow Ukraine to enter the EU.
The leadership of the conservative CDU/CSU alliance under Friedrich Merz, who has long since been expected to become Germany’s next chancellor, came together in Hamburg at the weekend to consult over its election strategy after its drop in the polls.
The alliance is proposing its Agenda 2030 to improve Germany’s economic standing, under the slogan: mehr fordern, weniger fördern (demand more, offer less financial support), as it pushes for a slimming down of the welfare state including more relief for those in work and less support for the unemployed or low paid. It also plans to put more stress on domestic security.