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BERLIN: Chancellor Friedrich Merz\u2019s warning this week that extremism was entering Germany\u2019s parliamentary system was the latest in a series of signs that mainstream parties\u2019 \u201cfirewall\u201d to isolate the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has begun to buckle.\n<\/p>\n
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.\n<\/p>\n
The ballot was secret but suspicion immediately fell on the 15 members of Merz\u2019s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) in parliament, who had been told to abstain.\n<\/p>\n
Karin Prien, deputy chair of the national CDU, said if CDU lawmakers were to blame, \u201cthere must be consequences.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
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 \u201cpolitical turning point.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first time, it was clear that the so-called \u2018firewall\u2019 doesn\u2019t have to be stronger than the freedom of action of members of parliament,\u201d said Martin Reichardt, head of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt.<\/p>\n
COULD AFD WIN A NATIONAL ELECTION IN GERMANY?\n<\/p>\n
The AfD\u2019s 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 \u2060War Two \u2060and renounce the horrors of Nazism and its nationalist, racist ideology. The AfD rejects their label of \u201cextreme right\u201d as a slur.\n<\/p>\n
Across Europe and beyond, the result, which left the AfD just short of an absolute majority in the state parliament, was seen as one of the clearest indications yet that it could win a national election in 2029.\n<\/p>\n
Merz\u2019s coalition with the center-left Social Democrats in Berlin has been under increasing strain, riven by disagreements and sliding in opinion polls as voters, like many across Western Europe, blame the mainstream parties for declining living standards.\n<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the parties held talks to iron out differences over issues including pensions and tax, and said they were \u201cdetermined not to hand our country over to extremists.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Set up over a decade ago during the euro zone debt crisis, the AfD has grown from a fringe movement \u2060into the most popular party in Germany in opinion polls.\n<\/p>\n
Yet parts of the AfD \u2014 including its Saxony-Anhalt branch \u2014 have been designated as extremist by German security services, meaning that they are considered to be opposed to constitutional principles of human rights, democracy and the rule of law.\n<\/p>\n
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the domestic intelligence agency, compiled a 1,100-page confidential report last year that found the AfD incited resentment of migrants, as well as racism and Islamophobia.\n<\/p>\n
For its part, the AfD says it is restoring German national pride and values, and ensuring that migrants are not prioritized at the expense of German citizens.\n<\/p>\n
So far, the \u201cfirewall\u201d approach \u2014 under which the established parties have refused to cooperate with the AfD \u2014 has kept it from joining any coalition government.\n<\/p>\n
In Saxony-Anhalt, where it needs three more seats for a majority, it is still unclear how it can form a government after talks over a possible coalition with the populist far-left BSW made no progress.<\/p>\n
FEARS OF COOPERATION WITH AFD\n<\/p>\n
However, the AfD\u2019s Ulrich Siegmund, who dismisses the firewall as \u201cchildish,\u201d says he can persuade enough members of other parties to defy party orders to enable him to be confirmed as state premier by the end of the year.\n<\/p>\n
In this week\u2019s speaker ballot, the AfD\u2019s Tobias Rausch \u2060won 48 votes \u2014 four more than the \u2060combined total held by the AfD and the BSW.\n<\/p>\n
Merz has ruled out any arrangement with the AfD, which he says aims to destroy the CDU, and the issue is expected to be discussed at a CDU\u2019s leadership meeting on Sunday and Monday.\n<\/p>\n
But whether it remains realistic to refuse to cooperate with a party attracting almost a third of the vote, and more in the formerly communist eastern states where it is strongest, has become an urgent question.\n<\/p>\n
CDU deputy leader Prien said any sign of accommodation could open divisions that could \u201cjeopardize the very existence of the entire party.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The AfD has gained ground nationwide but remains weaker in western Germany than in the east, and appears unlikely to repeat its Saxony-Anhalt result in state elections next year.\n<\/p>\n
However, the problems that have helped create the conditions for its rapid rise resist easy answers. War in Ukraine has cut off the supply of cheap energy that fueled Germany\u2019s economy while competition from China has eaten away at its once-invincible industrial base.\n<\/p>\n
Economists warn continually that fundamental reforms are needed to pensions and taxes to meet the needs of an aging population, while deep divisions remain between the eastern and western regions, almost four decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall.\n<\/p>\n
Marking the anniversary last week of German reunification in 1990, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier acknowledged that many felt overlooked by the political system and that a generalized feeling of insecurity had undermined confidence.\n<\/p>\n
But, in an unusually bleak assessment, he said the bitter political climate was threatening to send Germany back into the chaos that ended the democracy of the prewar Weimar Republic.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cToday is about the survival of democracy,\u201d he said. \u201cWe must stand up for what remains important.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n