Merz ally
challenges Germany’s far-right firewall ahead of crucial state elections
The
far-right AfD is set to perform well in elections in September in its political
heartland in the eastern part of the country.
July 24,
2026 4:00 am CET
By Nette
Nöstlinger
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-friedrich-merz-michael-kretschmer-challenge-afd-saxony-elections/
BERLIN —
A key ally of Friedrich Merz has ignited a major political debate by suggesting
the chancellor’s centrist conservatives should break a taboo and cooperate with
the country’s most popular party: the far-right Alternative for Germany.
Michael
Kretschmer, premier of the eastern state of Saxony and a member of the
chancellor’s center-right Christian Democratic Union, is challenging Merz’s
insistence on keeping the country’s firewall against the surging AfD ahead of
crucial elections in September that could put the far-right party in charge of
a region for the first time.
“Anyone
who still talks about firewalls hasn’t recognized the signs of the times,”
Kretschmer, who leads a minority government in Saxony, told the Handelsblatt
newspaper in an interview earlier this week. “We need to talk to anyone who
wants to talk.”
With
those comments, Kretschmer stirred up tensions that Merz has stubbornly sought
to avoid.
Merz
rules out cooperation with the far right — invoking the country’s Nazi past —
but the political realities of eastern Germany are piling on the pressure for a
rethink. Polls show that the AfD has a chance of winning an outright majority
in Saxony-Anhalt on Sept. 6 and is poised to perform well in
Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania and Berlin later that month.
At the
national level, POLITICO’s Poll of Polls puts the AfD as the single most
popular party with 28 percent support, with the Christian Democrats on 22
percent.
For now,
however, Merz is sticking to his line that Germany has a special historic
responsibility that means it cannot follow the course of other EU countries
where the far right has worked with the centrist mainstream.
“If a
far-right party were to enter the government in Germany, it would have a
completely different significance than if that were to happen in another
country,” he told reporters at a press conference. “This is also tied to our
history, and that’s why, for me, it’s neither a benchmark nor an example, nor
something to learn from. It is, quite simply, something different. I will do
everything in my power in Germany to prevent it.”
Instead,
Merz said the government’s goal had to be to seek to create a climate where the
far right could be defeated.
“Between
now and September 6, we will strive to facilitate and achieve stable political
conditions in both Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania,” he said.
The
challenge on the left
But the
reality in the election battlegrounds is that the AfD is polling well ahead of
all other parties in the eastern German states of Saxony-Anhalt (41 percent)
and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (36 percent).
The
former communist East has long been a stronghold for the far-right force. It is
also in this region that the AfD is known to be most radical, both in terms of
personnel and the positions it represents. Out of the five regions in Germany’s
East, four regional party branches are classified as right-wing extremist
organizations by domestic intelligence agencies.
Even if
the AfD fails to secure an absolute majority in Saxony-Anhalt, Merz’s
conservatives will be confronted with harsh political dynamics in September: To
keep the far right out of power, they would almost certainly have to work with
the populist anti-capitalist Left Party — which is also particularly strong in
the East and against whom the conservatives are also maintaining a firewall, as
outlined in a party resolution from 2018.
“We have
clear party convention resolutions here, and I have no reason to doubt that we
will abide by them,” Merz said about cooperation with the Left Party last week.
Regional
politicians within his own conservative party are, however, increasingly
questioning whether such promises can be upheld given the strength of parties
at both ends of the political spectrum.
Kretschmer’s
comments are widely seen as an attempt to start a debate about how to govern
after the September elections without radically breaking pre-election promises
and further eroding the CDU’s credibility.
It is an
approach that is not welcomed by party leaders in Berlin.
“We are
currently in the midst of a fierce political battle in three federal states,
particularly with — or against — the AfD,” Steffen Bilger, one of the CDU’s
parliamentary group leaders in the Bundestag, told Deutschlandfunk on Thursday.
“And that’s what we should be focusing on right now, rather than starting
debates like this.”
Politicians
from the center-left Social Democratic Party have, meanwhile, demanded clarity
from their federal coalition partners. The lead candidate for the Berlin
election called on the CDU to “come clean” about whether it still ruled out
cooperation with the AfD at regional level, while urging the party to open up
to the far left.
“The CDU
should finally admit that it can cooperate with the Left Party, because it’s
simply already doing so,” Steffen Krach told news portal t-online Wednesday in
view of the minority governments it leads in Saxony and Thuringia. “Anyone who
now demonizes the Left Party and equates it with the AfD is deceiving voters,”
he added.
The AfD,
meanwhile, sounded relaxed about all the fuss, telling German media outlets via
a spokesperson that the party was open to talking to everyone who wanted
to.
Torben
Braga, an AfD Bundestag lawmaker from the eastern state of Thuringia, however,
argued that, given the party’s current strength, it would not be in its
strategic interest to support a minority government in Saxony-Anhalt after the
September vote.
“I don’t
see why a party like the AfD, [that is polling around] a near-absolute
majority, would have to keep ensuring that a minority government remains in
office by securing majorities but not participating in executive decisions,” he
said. “That is a situation that cannot be in the interest of our voters.”
.jpeg)
