There is no chance that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) will be part of the new governing coalition that will be formed after this Sunday’s German election (23 February). Yet the party has dominated the campaign that began when Chancellor Olaf Scholz dissolved the current coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Free Democrats in November 2024.
The AfD is a strange party – and in some ways it is quite different from most of the other European far-right parties that have become more powerful in the past decade. It was formed in 2013 as a party of liberal economics professors who opposed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s approach to the euro crisis – its name was an explicit response to her statement that there was no alternative to bailing out Greece.
At that time, the AfD was not really a far-right party at all, though because it was to the right of Merkel’s Christian Democrat party on economic policy, and also Eurosceptic, it was immediately treated as if it were one. It struggled until the refugee crisis in 2015 when it reinvented itself as an anti-immigrant party. In the election two years later, it got into the Bundestag for the first time and, after Merkel formed a grand coalition with the SPD, became the leading opposition party.
Even compared with the AfD of 2015, however, it is now a much more radical party. Whereas many European far-right parties are becoming more moderate, at least on some issues, the AfD has been moving in the opposite direction, becoming extremer – so much so that last year Marine Le Pen said it was no longer “a reliable and suitable ally” and forced it out of the hard-right Identity and Democracy grouping in the European Parliament.
In Germany, there is an important legal distinction between radical right parties and extreme right parties, the latter of which are those that are deemed to reject the German constitution and can be banned by the German Constitutional Court. The Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz – the German domestic intelligence agency – is monitoring the AfD. It has already categorised three of the party’s regional branches as extreme right and “suspects” the party as a whole is extreme right.
Yet as the party has become extreme, it has also become more popular. At the last election in 2021 it received just under 13 per cent of the vote. But it is now at over 20 per cent in the polls, which would make it the second biggest party in the Bundestag after the Christian Democrats led by Friedrich Merz. Until a few years ago, many thought Germany’s history had made it immune to the far-right movements that seemed to be developing elsewhere in Europe. But the rapid success of such an extreme party makes Germany look like it may be an outlier in a negative sense.
Nevertheless, the AfD’s vote share remains lower than far-right parties in other countries like France, where Le Pen has a good chance of being elected as president in two years. The German political system, and the refusal of the mainstream parties to form coalitions with the AfD, means that the better the far-right party does the more the others will have to work together in order to form any kind of stable government. Two-party coalitions, previously the norm in German politics, have already become almost impossible.
The real significance of the AfD is not so much its vote share as the way it is shaping the political agenda in Germany – especially around immigration. A few weeks ago, with the support of the AfD, Merz introduced an “influx limitation bill”, which would have ended family reunification and made it easier to deport people. But though Scholz’s SPD blocked the bill from passing, it too has hardened its stance on immigration in ways that would have once seemed unimaginable. In 2023, echoing Trumpian rhetoric, Scholz appeared on the front cover of Der Spiegel declaring: “We must finally deport on a grand scale.”
These moves by the Christian Democrats and SPD were meant to show they were taking voter fears about immigration seriously and to stop the AfD rise. But polls suggest that, so far, this has not worked. If anything, they seem to have given credibility to the AfD’s position, and strengthened it – as political scientists long predicted they would.
Meanwhile the election of Donald Trump has been pivotal for the AfD. Elon Musk has said that “only the AfD can save Germany”, hosted a conversation with its leader Alice Weidel, and in January spoke by video link at an AfD event. On 14 February, the US vice-president JD Vance spoke at the Munich Security Conference, where he criticised the organisers for excluding the AfD. Although he did not meet with Scholz while in Munich, he did meet with Weidel.
Germany finds itself in an extraordinary position. The US government, on which Germany depends for its security – and to which it has no real alternative – is openly supporting a party that is seen as a threat to democracy in Germany. If Vance’s Munich trip is anything to go by, the AfD is the Trump administration’s preferred interlocutor.
What exactly this means for the future is hard to know. It could mean that Weidel can ask the Trump administration to put pressure on the next government to do what the AfD wants – though on immigration policy she is already pushing at an open door and may not even need US support. What is clear, however, is that the AfD does not have to be in government to reshape Germany.
[See also: The DEI trend cycle]
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