Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s warning this week that extremism was entering Germany’s parliamentary system was the latest in a series of signs that mainstream parties’ “firewall” to isolate the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has begun to buckle.
This week, at least four lawmakers from mainstream parties in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt appear to have defied party orders and voted to give the AfD, which wants to restrict immigration and restore energy ties with Russia, its first regional assembly speaker.
The ballot was secret but suspicion immediately fell on the 15 members of Merz’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) in parliament, who had been told to abstain.
Karin Prien, deputy chair of the national CDU, said if CDU lawmakers were to blame, “there must be consequences”.
The AfD itself, which has been leading the CDU in nationwide surveys for more than a year and declared its aim of winning a national election due in 2029, hailed a “political turning point”.
“For the first time, it was clear that the so-called ‘firewall’ doesn’t have to be stronger than the freedom of action of members of parliament,” said Martin Reichardt, head of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt.
The AfD’s record victory last month has alarmed rivals, who consider it an anti-democratic party opposed to the values that helped Germany to rebuild after World War Two and renounce the horrors of Nazism and its nationalist, racist ideology. The AfD rejects their label of “extreme right” as a slur.
