The right-wing Alternative for Germany party won a record number of votes in Sunday’s European Parliament election, a sharp rebuke to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling three-party alliance and a sign of a rightward shift in politics across the continent.
The party, known as the AfD, received 16% of the vote, second only to Germany’s conservative Christian Democrats (30%). AfD performance nearly 5 percentage points higher than in 2019 elected and attracted more voters than Germany’s three coalition parties. It was the AfD’s strongest showing in a national election, and support for Scholz’s coalition has reached record lows in the country, according to opinion polls.
On Monday, Alice Weidel, one of the two leaders of the AfD, asked Scholz to call new parliamentary elections, as French President Emmanuel Macron did after the party’s dismal election results . Mr. Scholz’s spokesman ruled out the possibility of an early election.
Wedel described her party’s “significant success” at a news conference in Berlin, saying the government was working against Germany rather than for it. “People are tired of it,” she said.
The election results could have far-reaching consequences. Europe’s sweeping plan for a series of environmental initiatives known as the Green New Deal may be losing traction, and Mr Scholz’s opponents have begun questioning his government’s legitimacy. They believe that if the EU election results are confirmed, it could show that only a third of Germans support his two-way governing partnership.
The Alternative for Germany, once a fringe group, is now under surveillance by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency for alleged “extremism.” Three-quarters of Germans said they believed the party posed a threat to democracy. But outrage over the killing of a police officer in Mannheim, Germany, and the arrest of an Afghan immigrant suspected of stabbing just days before the EU election may have reignited fears that the AfD is accustomed to exploiting.
The AfD’s record is also stronger than in the past, despite two of its top candidates for EU posts being barred from running after a series of public scandals. On top of this, millions of people have taken to the streets this year to protest the party’s anti-immigration stance, including a meeting attended by AfD members to discuss mass deportations of immigrants.
“It’s remarkable that the party has risen from the ashes,” said Suda David Welp, regional director of the German Marshall Fund’s Berlin office. But Ms. David Welp said dissatisfaction with the government, Germany’s The AfD’s strong base in the east (the AfD leads in all five states in the EU vote) and recent attacks on officials are likely to have given the AfD a boost.
“They are not going to disappear from the German political landscape anytime soon,” she added.
Although the figure was lower than the polling highs predicted just a few months ago, AfD members celebrated the result on Sunday night when it looked like the party might gain close to 25 percent support.
Ms. Wedel attributes this result to a distaste for the status quo. “People are tired of the bureaucracy in Brussels,” she told a German public broadcaster after the first forecast was released on Sunday evening.
As the election results came in on Sunday night, Scholz appeared at the Social Democratic Party headquarters in Berlin. But according to Germany’s Der Spiegel, when reporters asked him if he wanted to comment, he replied “no.”
The AfD’s fortunes appear to be rising in tandem with the decline of the Greens, an environmentally focused party that was once its stronghold in Germany. According to preliminary results, the Green Party’s vote share has dropped by almost half to about 12% from a high of more than 20% in the 2019 election.
Emilia Fester, a Greens member of parliament and one of the party’s youngest elected officials, said in an email: “Despite the progress made by the AfD, it is clear that very few There were young people switching from our Greens to the AfD, and instead many voted for smaller parties whose programs tended to be closer to those of the Greens and were more focused on personal issues,” she said. “It gives me hope.”
The election was also the first time 16- and 17-year-old Germans were allowed to vote, with the AfD notching a major victory among under-30s, increasing its share of under-30 voters by 10%, the results showed. . The Green Party, which once enjoyed strong support from activist Greta Thunberg and student protesters against climate change, has seen its electorate drop by 18%.
“In the past, younger voters tended to be more left-leaning and progressive,” Florian Stockl, a political science professor at the University of Exeter, said in an email. “This time, however, they turned to the right.”
He added that the AfD’s recent promotion of itself on TikTok may have played a role.
“This is consistent with recent findings that young people across Europe, especially young men, tend to take more right-leaning positions,” Mr Stockel said.
Ultimately, the outcome may be more of a symbolic victory for the Alternative for Germany than changing the dynamics of the European Parliament. Last month, the AfD’s top EU candidate, Maximilian Krah, was identified as a far-right group in the European Parliament after the party made equivocal comments in May about how evil the SS was. Democrats fired.
On Monday, AfD members voted to expel Mr Klar from the EU delegation. Ultimately, the party will send 14 members to Brussels (up from nine), whose powers will be limited, just like any other far-right bloc in parliament.
Tatiana Firsova contributed reporting.
