German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned on Wednesday that extremism is "forcefully making its way" into the country's parliaments, a day after a lawmaker from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was elected president of the state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt with help from the far left. The vote has rattled Berlin and raised fresh questions about the durability of Germany's political "firewall" against the far right.
A secret ballot with an uncomfortable result
AfD lawmaker Tobias Rausch secured 48 votes in Tuesday's secret ballot to become president of the Saxony-Anhalt parliament, after his party emerged as the largest force in last month's state election. The AfD and the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) together hold only 44 seats, meaning at least four other lawmakers backed Rausch. The BSW had pledged ahead of the vote to support the AfD candidate; the two parties share hostility to mass immigration and want an end to sanctions against Russia.
Merz was blunt: "Anyone who casts their vote for the AfD is playing the extremists' game and undermining credibility. In any case, this is incompatible with the values of my party, the CDU." He rejected speculation that members of his own Christian Democrats had backed Rausch, while conceding the secret ballot made it impossible to know who voted for whom — and he warned of possible political "false flag operations" designed to smear the CDU.
Why this vote matters beyond one state
The AfD won 43.8% in the September 6 Saxony-Anhalt election — its strongest state result ever — though it fell three seats short of an absolute majority. The party's branch in the state is classified as right-wing extremist by Germany's domestic intelligence agency. Weeks later, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the AfD again finished first with 38.2% while Merz's CDU crashed to 4.9%, below the 5% threshold — the first time the party has ever failed to enter a state parliament. In Berlin, the far-left Die Linke won the state election outright.
Wasting no time, the AfD and BSW used their new weight in the Saxony-Anhalt parliament to immediately table a motion calling for Germany to halt military and financial support for Ukraine and lift sanctions on Russia — a direct challenge to Berlin's foreign policy.
The firewall under strain
Merz's coalition partners, the Social Democrats, have demanded clarification, with parliamentary group leader Matthias Miersch raising the matter at a coalition meeting on Wednesday evening. Merz framed the fight as bigger than party politics: "This is a task for our society as a whole, and it is one I intend to play my part in."
The takeaway: the "firewall" custom that has kept the AfD out of power is holding on paper, but Tuesday's vote showed it can leak in practice. With the AfD leading national opinion polls, every state-level crack becomes a national test of whether Germany's mainstream parties can keep the far right — and now its unlikely far-left allies — from converting votes into institutional power.
Watch: YouTube coverage of Merz's warning and the AfD's Saxony-Anhalt parliament victory
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Long Road Ahead B (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0