German election shows that Europe is "moving" towards the past.

By Sergio Ferrari - On the last Sunday of February, the German electorate ratified at the polls the three predictions that the polls had already anticipated: a clear victory for the conservative Christian Democratic right, the spectacular rise of the far right, and the historic disaster of social democracy. Furthermore, the polls seemed to confirm a dichotomy that is not unique to Germany: the consolidation of the far right, despite the constant and often massive mobilizations of recent months aimed precisely at confronting this rise.

Germany woke up on Monday, February 24th, adjusting the pieces of its own political puzzle. To that end, and taking into account the dictates of the ballot box, the party with the most votes is attempting to build an alliance that will ensure governability at a particularly complex moment for the country and the European Union as a whole. Supremacy in this alliance – which until now was held by the socialists – will be exercised by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which, with 28% of the vote and 208 seats in the future parliament, will catapult billionaire Friedrich Merz as chancellor (prime minister). Although he anticipated this before the election, Merz immediately ratified an important decision after the elections: it is not possible to govern together with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

This party, which has the undisguised support of Elon Musk from Washington, attracted 20% of the electorate, especially in the eastern part of the country which, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, constituted the former German Democratic Republic. It thus obtained its best result in the national elections and, with 152 parliamentarians, becomes the second largest political force nationally. It is a young force, only 12 years old, nationalist, conservative, Eurosceptic, and anti-European Union. It proclaims strict control of immigration, and a part of its membership, especially its youth, claims the symbolism of fascism. Sectors of its leadership do not hide their neo-fascist sympathies.

Everything indicates that the Christian Democratic Union would be willing to integrate the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) into the future governing coalition, as a junior partner. With a meager 16% of the vote and only 120 seats, the SPD is paying the price for the lack of charisma of its Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the internal blockade of its government systematically imposed in recent years by one of its allies, the Liberal Party, and its timid and contradictory confrontation with the multiple problems suffered by broad social sectors of the country. These include: economic slowdown, rising cost of living, housing shortage, uncertainty about future prospects, climate crisis, geographical proximity and the impact of the Russo-Ukrainian war, as well as the sense of insecurity caused by terrorist attacks.

The crisis of social democracy is unparalleled. Germany's oldest party, and arguably the one with the largest number of members, won in 1998 with Gerhard Schröder, securing over 40% of the vote. Since then, it has been a complete setback: in 2021 it obtained 25,7% with Scholz, and this past Sunday it lost another 9 points. He couldn't even capitalize at the polls on the intense process of popular mobilizations against the far right that has been occurring in much of the country since the beginning of last year. One of these protests, in February of this year, gathered more than 200.000 people in Munich and many thousands more in various other cities.

Far behind in the current electoral landscape are the Green Party, with 11,6% of the vote (85 deputies), and The Left (Die Linke), with a strong youth presence and a surprising 8,77% (64 deputies).

Analysis with tweezers

If you look at political reality in the rearview mirror, "today we are back to where we were in 2021, when the possibility of a governing alliance between the conservative SVP and the Social Democrats was also considered. And we see at the top the same figures who were unable to form a successful alliance at the time. The big difference is that now, they must succeed, no matter what. If they don't succeed, in a short time Germany runs the serious risk of having the AfD as the most important political force," explains Beat Wehrle, a perceptive political analyst and expert on international cooperation issues, based in the city of Osnabrück in northwestern Germany, by telephone to this correspondent.

According to Wehrle, who puts the results into perspective, the UDC's victory at the polls on the last Sunday of February was not overwhelming. "It didn't manage to grow more than 5 points compared to 2021." The reason, we ask: "The type of candidate Friedrich Merz is, who won the elections but didn't win popular support." Furthermore, he made very serious mistakes during the campaign. "For example, he tried to reproduce the far-right's discourse and agenda against migration, thinking that this would increase his electoral base. It didn't help him win votes and, instead, strengthened the far right. If someone wants to vote for anti-immigrant proposals, they opt for the original model and not the copy," says Wehrle. He states that "with the Trump-style campaign, Merz deepened the polarization and ended up strengthening the most radical positions: both on the far right (AfD) and on the left (Die Linke)."

Regarding the causes of the Social Democratic Party's electoral decline, "it fell asleep by presenting Olaf Scholz as its candidate again, discarding other figures who would have generated greater enthusiasm among the electorate." Wehrle argues that the PSD arrived exhausted in the last elections, due to the strain of being the main force in a government alliance (along with the Greens and Liberals) that had to face multiple crises.

Beat Wehrle also points to the good electoral result of The Left, which is "younger, bolder, noisier and anticipates that it will constitute an interesting opposition in Parliament. In particular, with its leader Heidi Reichinnek, 36, who managed to counter Merz's offensive when, a few days before the elections, she sought the support of the far right to impose more aggressive parliamentary measures against illegal immigration, which caused a political scandal of national proportions."

German-speaking Europe

With a 780-kilometer border shared with Germany, sharing German as an official language and a strong cultural ties with the former, Austria also experiences a dynamic with particularities comparable to that of its large neighbor. Its current situation seeks to address an unresolved crisis that began in late September of last year with the latest elections for the National Council, the lower house of its parliament.

In these elections, the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) (ideologically close to the German AfD) achieved its best historical result, with almost 29% of the vote and 57 of the 183 seats in the Council, becoming the main national political force. The Austrian Christian Democratic People's Party (ÖVP), then in power, lost 20 of its 71 seats, while the Greens, its coalition partner, lost 10 of its 26. The center-left Social Democrats (SPÖ) won only 21,14% (and only 41 seats), their worst electoral result in recent years (as happened with their German counterparts). The liberal NEOS party improved compared to the previous election in 2019, increasing from 15 to 18 seats.

Following the political and electoral earthquake of September 29th, this prosperous nation, a European powerhouse, has so far failed to reach a governance pact. Initially, the conservative ÖVP party attempted to form a coalition with the left and liberals to oppose the far right, but failed to form a government until last January.

From then on, it was the far right that tried to propose a coalition to the conservatives. The negotiations did not prosper, mainly due to the Freedom Party's Eurosceptic views and its arrogance in demanding to occupy the majority of government positions. At the same time, large demonstrations against the far right multiplied, especially in the capital, Vienna, which constituted an additional element of political pressure.

Finally, on February 22nd, a new light appeared in the gloomy Austrian landscape, where the political deadlock had so far prevented even the adoption of the budget for the current year. The conservative right, the social-democratic left, and the liberals announced that they had restarted negotiations to form a government. If this new ongoing process is confirmed, the Austrian far-right, despite being the country's main electoral force, would not be in government, just as in Germany, where the AfD, the second most voted party, also seems to be renouncing any option of co-government. The so-called "sanitary belts" are operating in both countries, which, for now, and in any case in the short term, bring together the left, center, and right to cut off the far-right's aspirations of reaching government.

However, this "belt" does not prevent the entire political spectrum from moving further and further to the right, and centrist forces – and even social democrats and greens – from adopting the banners, slogans, postulates, and discourses promoted by the far right. If the entire political space becomes more conservative, there is a proven shift across much of Europe where social democrats become more centrist, the center becomes more conservative, and the right moves closer to more extreme positions, bordering, for example, on xenophobia.

Switzerland, the third largest German-speaking country, pioneered the development of a far-right party. The Swiss People's Party (SVP), which held 11% of the electorate in the early 90s, reached 28% in the last parliamentary elections (2023). Its tenets are radically conservative, nationalist, economically liberal, and opposed to European integration and immigration.

The major difference with its far-right counterparts in Germany and Austria is its participation in government for several decades due to the "magic formula" in effect in the Swiss Confederation. By virtue of this formula, the seven positions in the collegiate executive branch are distributed among the four parties with the largest representation: currently, two from the UDC, two from the liberal right, two from the Socialist Party, and one from the Centre Party, which is Christian Democratic in tendency. As part of the government, the Swiss far-right is, by necessity, jointly responsible for state policies. Although it does not abandon its radical daily rhetoric, which, as in many other European countries, forces the political cursor to move to the right of the political spectrum with results that are as retrograde as they are worrying.

Translation: Rose Lima.