Far-right triumph in German district election
spooks politicians
The anti-immigration, climate-skeptic Alternative for
Germany has won its first district election — and has risen to
second-most-popular in polls.
BY HANS VON
DER BURCHARD
JUNE 26,
2023 3:53 PM CET
Germany’s
far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) for the first time won a district
council election as it overtook Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats in
national polls, sparking concerns over a broader rise of the populist party in
upcoming elections.
AfD
candidate Robert Sesselmann on Sunday won a runoff election in Sonneberg, in
the eastern German state of Thuringia, against incumbent district administrator
Jürgen Köpper from the center-right Christian Democrat Party (CDU) — despite
other parties like the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Free Democrats
endorsing the CDU candidate.
“I’m
dismayed by the result in Sonneberg,” said Green lawmaker Katrin
Göring-Eckardt, who is also one of the vice chairs of the Bundestag. “Thank you
to all who continue to fight for this county to remain democratic, open-minded
and friendly.”
She added,
however, that she thinks Sonneberg — which is one of Germany’s smallest
districts, with only around 48,000 eligible voters — could not be compared to
the rest of Thuringia, much less the entire country.
Still, the
far-right victory in the local election — which was heavily overshadowed by
national issues such as a controversial green energy law — comes amid a broader
rise of the AfD in national polls: The most recent data by POLITICO’s Poll of
Polls, which shows the average of national polls, shows that the AfD has
overtaken Scholz’s SPD as Germany’s second-most-popular political party.
The far
right is particularly strong in the states of former East Germany which,
despite reunification, continue to experience lower employment and economic
development rates. The AfD currently leads in polls in the eastern states of
Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, all of which will hold elections next year.
Most
recently, the party has been successful in attracting voters by railing against
rising migrant numbers as well as the government’s plans to boost green energy,
most notably by a new law that bans gas and oil heating in new buildings.
Charlotte
Knobloch, the President of the Jewish Community in Munich and Upper Bavaria,
reacted to the far-right victory in Sonneberg by saying that “the danger to the
Jewish community and other minorities has long been real.”
The AfD has
also promoted anti-Semitic clichés, as laid out for example in a study by the
American Jewish Committee.
Confronted
by the widespread criticism that the controversy around the German government’s
heating law contributed to the far-right rise, Scholz’s spokesperson Steffen
Hebestreit rebutted that the government has “a clear concept” for the green
transition and is “on a good path, but we are not there yet.”
In a thinly
veiled reference to the AfD, Hebestreit also warned that “pitting groups
against each other, and perhaps also making migrants responsible for something
for which they are not responsible at all, is certainly not a recipe that would
lead this country into a good future.”
Scholz
admitted in a speech last week that the green transition “will not be easy” and
stressed that the government must “provide convincing answers” to citizens who
are concerned about potentially costly steps in weaning Germany off of fossil
fuels.
“Otherwise,
those who play politics with public fear and in bad temper will become even
more popular,” the chancellor said.
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