The CDU's 'AfD problem': too big to ignore, too controversial to team up with

Yesterday’s regional elections in Saxony saw Germany's anti-euro Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) score an impressive 9.7%  netting the party its first ever seats in one of Germany’s regional parliaments. The lead candidate of the Green party, Antje Hermenau, described the AfD result as an “earthquake” while AfD leader Bernd Lucke celebrated that they “finally arrived on the German party landscape.”

It is now up to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party to find a new coalition partner after Saxony's FDP followed the national party in losing all its seats. The CDU's lead candidate and current Prime Minister of Saxony, Stanislaw Tillich, categorically excluded a potential coalition with the AfD describing it as a protest party that due to its inner turmoil was completely unfit to govern. He only waited until after the election result was announced to make this statement however, following a debate within the CDU which continues.

Commenting on the prospects for a CDU-AfD coalition, Bild columnist Bela Anda writes that if it were to enter into a coalition with the AfD,

“The CDU would saw off the branch on which it itself is sitting." 

A CDU-SPD grand coalition is therefore the most likely option although a CDU-Green coalition could also be on the cards.

So is the AfD 'Gekommen um zu bleiben' (here to stay)?

This is not only the title of a famous German pop song but now the question everyone is asking themselves. Regional elections in Thüringen and Brandenburg are coming up in two weeks and the AfD has a good chance of enter both regional parliaments. However, the party's objective remains winning Bundestag seats in 2017 having narrowly missed the 5% threshold in 2013. There will be another eleven regional elections before 2017 and the challenge for the party will be to keep the momentum going. The AfD leadership will no doubt remember the fate of the Pirate party in 2011 - polled at a spectacular 13% before plummeting into virtual non-existence.

In Saxony a large share of AfD vote came from ‘Sonstige’ (other parties) and ‘Nichtwähler’ (non-voters) which is typical for protest parties. But at the same time there is a considerable spread across most mainstream parties with the largest share coming from the CDU (34,000 votes).

This would be a particular headache for Angela Merkel’s party. The worst case scenario for Merkel is that the AfD becomes to the CDU what Die Linke is to the SPD - and indeed, some would say, UKIP to the Tories in Britain: too big to ignore, too controversial to team up with. This headache will become particularly severe if the liberal FDP's decline is irreversible, dooming the CDU to always have to look to the SDP (or the Greens), in turn making left-right coalitions more or less a permanent feature of German politics.

What does Alternative für Deutschland really stand for? Its getting hard to tell

Beatrix says change direction - but where to?

When the anti-euro Alternative für Deutschland was first founded, it was derided as a fringe party for professors obsessed with ordoliberalism that would struggle to make a lasting impact on the German political scene.

However, the party got within 0.3% of the vote of winning seats in the Bundestag in September and is polling at around 6%-7% ahead of the European elections, meaning it looks certain to win seats in Brussels/Strasbourg. Yet the party's relatively strong showing in the polls masks serious internal divides along personnel and policy lines.

At the start of the year, it was being reported that some founding members were leaving in disillusionment in the belief that the party was abandoning its liberal roots and embarking on a sharply 'rightward' trajectory, which was manifested by the embracing of traditional Christian moral values and taking a tough line on immigration - AfD were notably the only mainstream German party to praise the results of the Swiss referendum on curbing free movement.

Initially, it seemed that this shift to the 'right' was limited to social policy, with AfD still maintaining its liberalism on economic policy; Hans-Olaf Henkel - the former head of the Federation of German Industries - described it as "Germany's last liberal party". However, this also seems to have been consigned to the past following the party's convention over the weekend at which it voted on its manifesto for the European elections.

Crucially, the party's grassroots voted to reject the EU-US free trade deal (TTIP) currently under negotiation despite strong support from the leadership including party leader Bernd Lucke, who argued that it was a "positive, constructive objective which is very much in Germany's interest". Beatrix von Storch (pictured), an MEP candidate and high profile AfD activist - who for many epitomises the party's recent lurch towards conservatism - argued that the agreement "is not fair and will burden our country".

Interestingly, when it came to the recent events in the Crimea, the party's deputy federal spokesperson criticised the independence referendum but also called for greater "understanding" for Moscow and described the interim Ukrainian government as "not democratically legitimate". A motion was passed (to thundering applause according to FAZ) rejecting German taxpayer assistance for Ukraine and economic sanctions on Russia.

Such sentiments - scepticism of free trade deals (or 'directed trade' as libertarians would say) and emphasises on isolationism in world affairs, puts the AfD closer to either the American "Old Right" (which Europeans tend not to even remotely understand) or the European Socialist Left.

So what does all this mean? Well it seems that AfD are at risk of becoming a catch-all populist party with strongly ideologically contradictory factions rather than one which can be easily placed on the traditional 'left/right' axis. This applies to a number of other European parties which combine elements of both including the National Front, PVV, the (True) Finns party and UKIP (although UKIP economic policy is more liberal than the others'). It also shows that those Tories keen for AfD to join the ECR group in the European Parliament may wish to pause for thought.

To some extent this is not surprising given that even in its early stages the party paradoxically drew disproportionate support from former FDP and Die Linke voters. We also noted after the elections that the party had done particularly well in Eastern Germany, which tends to vote more heavily for left-wing parties than West Germany. In the East, AfD has also struggled to contain creeping take-over attempts by more nationalist elements.

The question for the party is where does it go from here: does it establish itself as a permanent protest party borrowing ideas and policies from the political smorgasbord as it sees fit  - there is clearly a gap in the market - or does it try to remain a genuine economically liberal party angling for a spot in the mainstream?

AfD: The party of the youth?

AfD chief Bernd Lucke on the campaign trail

It's barely been half a year since the German anti-euro party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) emerged onto  the political scene (and we were one of the first to flag up the then-unknown party), but its ascent has been rapid.

On Sunday's federal elections,  AfD managed to convince two million Germans to back it. With 4.7% of the final vote, the party just narrowly missed the 5% threshold to enter the Bundestag. Had AfD made it in, it would have had over 30 seats.

Age plays an interesting part in the AfD story. Had the elections been decided by younger voters, AfD would now be preparing to enter parliament. Lead by economist Bernd Lucke, the party won 6%  of  the overall share of votes from those aged between 18 to 24. It won the same amount from those aged between 25 - 44. Support for AfD drops to 5% in the 45-59 group, and to below 3% in the over-60's category.

The 60+ voters are the clear conservative stronghold in Germany, with over 50% of them voting to conserve the status quo with Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU. In short: the younger generations are more likely to vote for Germany's euro-rebels than the older ones. And there is a logic to this: the older voter is more likely to feel the weight of Germany's recent history, therefore, rejecting anything  they may perceive as 'anti-European.'


Now, the interesting dynamic in all this, is, of course, that AfD has been depicted by many commentators as the "Bourgeois protest party;" or as an old and boring "party of professors." But obviously something about it speaks to younger voters.

One of AfD's actual professors, Prof. Dr. Lothar Maier, argued last month he didn't agree with the 'boring AfD' image, saying:

"We have 20,000 members in Germany and there aren't so many professors in Germany. Our membership is coming from all stratas of the population."

Another interesting element to highlight is that AfD won enough votes to take it over the 5% barrier, in all but one of the eastern German states.

The AfD's candidate in Brandenburg, Alexander Gauland, thinks that this is because “people are not so strongly bound to parties in the east”, while another prominent AfD candidate, Konrad Adam, adds: "eastern Germans haven't got bad experiences with experiments." And indeed, if a new currency were introduced in Germany (the AfD argues against the euro), it could be easier for east Germans to stomach: it would be their fourth currency in 25 years.

So what side of the political spectrum does AfD gets its votes from?

Richard Hilmer from leading German pollser Infratest Dimap, explains that “AfD voters come from all political directions,” stressing that the "party of professors" actually received most support from workers. The graph below shows that AfD got its largest share of votes from the FDP and Die Linke, but also a sizeable part from the CDU/CSU and the SPD:

Commenting on his party's future on Phoenix TV, Lucke said: “We need to become more professional for the elections in 2014,  [during] this campaign we had to improvise a lot.”

But it looks like Lucke, (who is yet to decide whether or not he will run in the European elections in May 2014) may enjoy further success. Bear in mind that the threshold to enter the European Parliament is only 3%. In the last European elections in 2009, the CSU and Die Linke got about 2 million votes, resulting in 8 MEP seats. AfD has already shown that it can mobilise such numbers.

Moreover, EU-protest parties (such as UKIP, for example) tend to perform their strongest in European elections. And while this is not to gloss over the considerable differences between UKIP and AfD as parties, this should raise expectations for AfD's showing next year.

It may not have made it into the Bundestag, but we still may have a lot more to hear from AfD.

Germany's anti euro party clashes with major pollster ahead of election

As we have noted in the past, it is possible that Germany’s anti-euro party, Alternative für Deutschland,  has a wider support base than polls suggest. 

Voters may still be embarrassed to admit support for AfD via telephone polling (popular in Germany), and because polls are weighted to include past vote recall, they are inherently biased in favour of the established parties.

Though polls usually put AfD  on about 2-3%, recent polls have put them as high as 4%: just one point short of the 5% threshold needed to enter the Bundestag.

And this issue has been stewing. Last month AfD leader Bernd Lucke claimed that employees of  the major German polling companies, Forsa and Allensbach,  had informed him that AfD was polling well above 5% in the pollsters' raw data, but that they were deliberately fudging AfD’s results.

Pretty sensational stuff if true.

But now the regional court in Cologne has slapped AfD on thewrist, ruling that it is not allowed to make such allegations against Forsa.

Forsa Chief Manfred Güllner (who has previously admitted that the AfD may do better than predicted by polls), called Lucke’s allegations “disgraceful,” adding that AfD hasn’t  “even come close to 5% -- let alone over.”

Güllner isn’t holding back his punches, saying of the Afd leader "I only call him liar Lucke...[he] is completely insane. We handle AfD just like every other party. What Mr Lucke is claming is utter rubbish, a complete conspiracy theory. None of our employees spoke to Mr Lucke, absolute nonsense.”

But with the federal election taking place in less than a week, we will soon know just how accurate the polls have been about AfD.

 

German election update: Lucke hits back

An interesting story caught our eye in today's Welt concerning next month's German elections. Bernd Lucke, the head of the anti-euro Alternative für Deutschland party (seemingly undaunted by a recent attempted assault on his person) has written a letter to German President Joachim Gauck asking for access to documents in which the German government has simulated different scenarios to save the euro, citing Germany's freedom of information laws. The move fits with the party's theme of "having courage for the truth" (Mut zur Wahrheit), which it accuses other German political parties of lacking.

This comes after the same request addressed to the Chancellery, Bundesbank and German banking supervisor Bafin was rejected on the basis that the information is held by the eurozone's network of central banks, and therefore falls outside the scope of German law. Lucke has criticised such "questionable" behaviour on the part of German officials, while noting that the Bundesbank's refusal to reveal the information shows that it is de facto supporting the German government when it should be a politically independent actor.

While we're not expecting the information to become public soon, the documents would certainly make for interesting reading as they would reveal how the German government assessed the costs of a breakup, and therefore whether its subsequent policies for dealing with the crisis have indeed been 'alternativlos' as Merkel has argued, or whether alternative policies were jettisoned due to the short-term political and/or economic implications.

Open Europe Berlin interviews Prof. Bernd Lucke, leader of Germany's anti-euro party AfD

Our German-based partner organisation Open Europe Berlin has published on its blog an exclusive interview with Professor Bernd Lucke - founder and leader of Germany's new anti-euro party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). We have translated some of the most interesting bits.

On the topic of design flaws in the European Monetary Union (EMU)...

Bernd Lucke (BL): The root of all evil is, in my assessment, the fact that the European Treaties did not provide, and do not provide until today, for the possibility to withdraw from the eurozone...Since leaving [the euro] as a last resort was excluded from the outset, the possibility of exerting political pressure on member states was also limited.

[…]

Despite non-sustainable economic development in some countries, the financial markets obviously did not pick up on the large differences [between eurozone countries], which affected the risk of credit default. In turn, the low interest rates 'funded' these developments.  Actually, the alarm bells should have been ringing in view of the different developments in country-specific inflation rates, unit labour costs and trade balances. Also, the housing bubbles in Ireland or Spain should have been recognised and counteracted upon by politicians. However, warning systems were not available. It was revealed how ill-conceived the introduction of the euro was, under all aspects.

On the role of the ECB in the crisis...

BL: The ECB is not directly to blame because it was simply a part of the poorly constructed euro system...In the time before the crisis, the ECB could have been blamed at most for not pointing out the dangers associated with different inflation rates in the euro countries...Just a note: an independent central bank is good. But a central bank – like the ECB – that is no longer subject to state or democratic control and has switched to self-preservation mode is extremely dangerous.

On using tools such as the ESM and OMT to stabilise the eurozone...

BL: The ESM is ultimately a giant institutionalised eurobond, and therefore a form of debt mutualisation...What we want as AfD is...the return to the Maastricht criteria, and in particular the re-introduction and strict compliance with the no-bailout clause. No country shall be liable for the debts of other countries...Countries should and would go bankrupt, which would reduce the partly unbearable debt levels.

On how AfD sees a eurozone break-up...

BL: As an ‘immediate measure’, we demand the consequent compliance with the [existing] rules of the European Treaties as well as adding a euro-exit clause to the rules. If necessary, we want to force this right to exit by blocking future ESM loans with a German veto. Without further assistance loans, the crisis countries would decide that it is in their own interests to exit the monetary union. This should happen in an orderly and gradual [manner]. On the legal side, the European treaties need to be changed. We have parliaments and governments for that. And Germany has enough weight to push this through.

Bernd Lucke sets out his alternative for Germany and the EU

The new German anti-euro party Alternative für Deutschland’s radically different take on the eurozone compared with the rest of the German political establishment has generated a lot of interest both inside Germany and beyond. As such it was no surprise that today’s Q&A session with AfD leader Bernd Lucke (hosted by the Bruges Group in Westminster) was packed. Here are a few key points from the event:

On the formation of AfD and its prospects 

Lucke admitted that as a young Economics professor in 1999 he supported the euro because he believed it would lead to structural reforms in Southern European countries, and because he took the ‘no bailout clause’ in the Maastricht Treaty at face value. It was the breaking of this that led him to leave the CDU and eventually establish AfD.

He also said that the German political system is structured to keep out new parties – including state subsidies for established parties - with the Greens being the only successful entrant onto the scene in recent years. However he said he was encouraged by polls suggesting AfD’s potential support could be as high as 30%, and that the key would be attracting lower educated blue collar workers in particular.

On the Eurozone

Lucke said that he had reached the conclusion that the current eurozone policy was fatally “mis-conceived” and would never work because financial markets’ fears of a sovereign default could never be squared with the kind of tough conditionality necessary to ensure that member states met their obligations with regards to structural reforms and fiscal consolidation (the failure of the fiscal pact to enforce its 3% deficit limit suggests he could have a point).

Instead, he argued that the Southern member states should leave immediately in order to allow for the devaluation of their new currencies, after which the remaining member states could decide whether to maintain a currency union between themselves or to go for a full break up.

On the UK and the EU

Lucke said that despite his opposition to the euro, he was not opposed to EU integration, adding that as a German he valued its role as a peace project. He even suggested that he was not opposed to transfers between European states per se but that the current system was flawed – for example indirect transfers via the ECB’s bond buying programmes, which happen without democratic approval. However, he added that there was much to be reformed about the EU from its overbearing bureaucracy and appetite for regulation which stifle economic growth to its undemocratic practices. He added that as such he broadly supported David Cameron’s critique, and that he valued British ‘euroscepticism’ as a positive force in ensuring better decisions being reached at the EU level.