German voters go to the polls on Sunday, February 23rd, in the knowledge that the next chancellor of Germany will probably be Friedrich Merz.
The leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is the lesser of two evils for many voters who believe that the ‘grand coalitions’ of the past—an alliance of the CDU and the Social Democrats—were responsible for hurling Germany into multiple crises.
The government led by former CDU leader Angela Merkel, as well as the current one controlled by social democrat Olaf Scholz, have been instrumental in damaging the country’s economy. Their ill-founded energy policy led to the disposal of safe and secure resources, such as nuclear power and cheap Russian gas, and a huge rise in energy prices.
These governments are also at fault for welcoming the mass migration wave of 2015-16—the start of an ongoing wave of millions of people surging to Europe, most of whom made the journey illegally, crossing Europe’s fragile borders unchecked.
This Willkommenskultur under Merkel has led to the drastic reshaping of Western European societies, the creation of parallel societies populated by migrants who do not wish to integrate, and a soaring rise in crime. Recent terrorist acts—and knife attacks committed by failed asylum seekers—only add to the bitterness that Germans feel towards their leadership, whom they rightly blame for not protecting them.
In this context, it is no wonder that voters are flocking to the current opposition parties— especially to the ones on the Right.
The right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which was formed in 2013, will most likely get its best-ever result on Sunday, expecting to receive 20-22 percent of the votes and finishing in second place. The party has consistently campaigned on an anti-migration platform, and its rise in popularity reflects the anger Germans are feeling.
Some voters, however, may still feel that the AfD is too far to the right, and want something more predictable: a CDU whose leader has vowed to take the party back to its conservative roots, and has promised to be just as tough on migration as the AfD. Friedrich Merz’s recent decision to allow the AfD to support his motion to turn back all illegal and undocumented migrants at Germany’s borders marked a watershed in the country’s history as it broke—if only briefly—the taboo that mainstream parties are under no circumstances allowed to cooperate with the “far right.”
Merz has maintained that he would never form a coalition with the AfD, but the question remains whether he can be trusted to truly steer the CDU back to its conservative past, away from the Left and the Greens with whom it has gladly flirted for many decades.
The party leader’s insistence that he would be tough on migration and crime, prioritise Germany’s economy and industries over the fight against climate change, and perhaps even turn nuclear power back on seem alluring to many.
Bence Bauer, director of the MCC’s Hungarian-German Institute think tank in Budapest told europeanconservative.com:
It is very hard to say that you want a U-turn on migration policies, on nuclear energy, or on woke policies when you are the one who caused the whole problem. Merz faces another dilemma: apart from him and CDU Secretary-General Carsten Linnemann, the bulk of the party’s leadership consists of Merkelists. It is interesting to note that not every CDU lawmaker supported Merz’s anti-migration proposals in the parliament on January 29th while all the AfD MPs did.
The CDU, together with its Bavarian sister party CSU, is on course to win Sunday’s election with about 30-31% of the votes. That will hardly be enough to form a government, posing the question: who will Merz enter into a coalition with?
The answer is simple: it will not be the AfD. It could be the liberal FDP party—if it manages to pass the 5% threshold—but even then, their total number of MPs would be too few for a majority. That leaves none other than the Social Democrats and a return to the grand coalition, or the Greens, and a return to radical climate and woke policies.
As Bence Bauer explains:
If you take AfD out of the equation, as a party that no one else wants to do business with, then the leftist parties, including the SPD, the Greens, and Die Linke, will always have a majority and always have leverage over the CDU. The question is how long will the voters bear another grand coalition with all its nuanced compromises.
Whatever Merz decides, Germany will be left in limbo, and the voters’ desire for change—such as the closure of borders to illegal migrants, which polls say that 70 percent of Germans support—will be ignored.
