A few days ago, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and the Christian Social Union (CSU) parties announced their agreement to form a new Coalition Government in Germany.
The early parliamentary elections held in February this year following the collapse of the Coalition between the SDP, the Greens, and the Free Liberals (FDP) resulted in the CDU and their Bavarian CSU ally receiving nearly 29 per cent of the vote, which translated into a bloc of 208 seats in the new 630-seat German Federal Parliament the Bundestag.
According to recent amendments to the electoral laws made by the German Federal Constitutional Court, the number of seats was reduced from 733 in the 2021-2025 parliament to 630 in the new one.
The SPD only managed to secure 16 per cent of the vote in the elections, decreasing its seats to just 120 from its being the largest party in the previous parliament. With a total of 328 seats for the three parties, the new German Coalition Government, headed by Friedrich Merz, leader of the CDU, as chancellor, secured a comfortable majority – the number of seats required for a simple majority, i.e., 50 per cent plus one, is 316 – amidst the difficult political, economic, and social circumstances facing Germany.
February’s early elections not only added to the seats held by the CDU and CSU and deducted from those held by the SPD but also enabled the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party to become the second-largest parliamentary bloc, with two seats above 150 (152).
The party, led by Alice Weigel, whose political priorities, based on anti-immigrant sentiment, curbing immigration and asylum, an unclear economic agenda, a negative view of the European Union, and a refusal to arm Ukraine and the continued conflict with Russia, did not differ significantly from those of Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally in France. It won nearly 21 per cent of the vote, doubling its share compared to the 2021 elections and thus also doubling its number of seats in parliament.
With the unprecedented rise of the far-right in the German Federal Parliament since the end of Nazi Party rule in 1945, the AfD is no longer a marginal political force that centre-right parties such as the CDU and the CSU, centre-left parties such as the SPD, and other liberal and left-wing parties can quarantine in parliament by refusing to engage with it or by ignoring it in daily legislative and oversight work.
Instead, in the new parliament the far-right has become the “leader of the opposition” to the ruling CDU. The AfD will now be represented on all parliamentary committees and receive the second-largest institutional and financial allocations guaranteed by German law for parliamentary parties after the CDU.
Behind it in terms of seats is the Green Party, which was a partner in the previous Coalition Government. However, its repeated compromises on environmental policy and the green economy, along with its pro-arming stances towards Ukraine and the continued military conflict with Russia, have cost it much credibility and support among voters, who have long associated the Green Party with serious action on climate change and a rejection of involvement in wars and armed conflicts.
As a party, it emerged from the German Peace Movement of the 1980s. In the 2025 elections, it received only around 12 per cent of the vote, and its number of seats in the new parliament decreased to 85.
The surprise among the opposition was the Left Party, which witnessed a sharp split in the 2021-2025 parliament through the defection of leftist politician Sahra Wagenknecht’s group. Negative expectations circulated about it before the February elections, excluding it from the formation of the new government.
However, the Left, with its traditionally influential presence in the former East German states and its well-known figures such as Gregor Gysi, Dietmar Bartsch, and Bodo Ramelow, was able to convince nearly nine per cent of voters to vote for its lists, thus securing 64 seats in the new parliament.
The Green Party and Left Party seats will provide the opposition in the 2025 parliament, preventing the opposition from being limited to members of the AfD. Many of the latter’s leaders are unfamiliar with the tools and methods of legislative and oversight work, and some of them have been implicated in controversial political activities that have prompted surveillance by the German domestic intelligence service the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Nevertheless, the AfD’s numerical leadership of the parliamentary opposition can be expected to garner more popular support through potential protests against the policies of the new ruling Coalition, including those of the CSU and SPD. Indeed, public opinion polls conducted in Germany in the few weeks following the February elections showed that the far right had continued its advance and was closing in on the CDU, the Party of Chancellor Merz, which will lead the new Coalition Government once parliament convenes on 6 May.
This is not an easy political situation for Germany, where not a day goes by without some reference to the Nazi past and its crimes in a film, a drama, a literary reading, an art exhibition, a newspaper article, or an interview with a traditional or new media outlet. Not a single statement by a political leader appears without its potential conflict with the far right being examined, which some viewing the AfD as a neo-Nazi force threatening the democratic system, and others classifying it as a populist party that is no different from many European far-right parties whose concerns include anti-immigrant sentiments, attacks on open borders (or formerly open borders), and the freedoms of travel, work, study, and life among the European continent’s countries.
German society is suffering from economic setbacks due to the recession and contraction of the largest European economy over the past two years. It is also facing severe social crises, evidenced by the escalating violence perpetrated by Nazi groups and radical left-wing movements, as well as by extremist and criminal elements present as a very small minority among the ranks of migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers.
Given the current state of affairs in Europe, including the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war, and global tensions in the areas of trade, the economy, and politics, such as tariff wars and technology wars, Germany’s stability, thanks to the cohesive performance of its new Coalition Government, its economic transition from recession and contraction to growth, albeit limited, and its renewed diplomatic mediation efforts to end the war in Ukraine, will help to distance Europe from conflicts and reduce tensions globally.
The writer is a political scientist and former MP. He is currently director of the Middle East Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 24 April, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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