BERLIN — A conservative backlash is brewing in Germany, but the likely winners are working to make the transition palatable for all citizens.
The Union parties — the Christian Democratic Union and its sister party, the Bavaria-focused Christian Social Union — are poised to lead Germany after the coming weekend’s parliamentary election.
The Washington Examiner spoke with CDU member Jürgen Hardt, the chief whip of the CDU/CSU in the Bundestag foreign affairs committee, about how his party is preparing to act on voter concerns without over-correcting into political extremism.
“Germany will be soon back, economically and politically,” Hardt triumphantly told the Washington Examiner on Friday, just two days ahead of the election.
CDU is polling around 30% support from the public ahead of the Feb. 23 election, followed in second by the further-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party at approximately 22%.
This sudden rise of conservative politics represents a distinct about-face from the left-wing “traffic light coalition” formed in 2021 by the Social Democrats, or SPD, Free Democratic Party, and the Greens.
“It’s very unusual in Germany that after 3 1/2 years of being elected out of government, we now have probably the chance to get the majority of power again,” Hardt said.
The CDU’s tone ahead of its likely victory is distinctly German in its inoffensiveness — promising logistical reforms demanded by the public while avoiding the bombastic rhetoric that characterizes populism in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom.
That might be because the first task for a CDU government would be forming a coalition, a process requiring grueling negotiations with left-wing parties because the party vows not to work with the AfD, finding their second-place rivals too distasteful for cooperation.
The CDU would be forced to form a coalition with either the SPD or the Greens, members of the ousted coalition that boast distinctly different goals than the conservatives in many fields.
“It’s very unlikely in Germany, or unusual, for one party to have an absolute majority. Therefore, the CDU will be obliged to find one partner minimum for building a coalition. I think this will be most likely the Social Democrats,” Hardt told the Washington Examiner. “And I hope that it will [work] with only one of the other parties and not necessarily two or more. It would be a difficult situation in Germany to negotiate if you are negotiating among more than two [parties].”
The CDU is already trying to discern which opposing party will bend enough to make a new government work.
The most likely outcome seems to be the CDU and SDP working together, a cooperative arrangement that has happened four times since World War II, known as the “Grand Coalition.”
“Looking to the political concepts, I think concerning foreign security policy, we are maybe closer to the Greens due to support for Ukraine, to the support of NATO and increase of military expenditures. And in several other fields, for example, like economics, we as Christian Democrats are closer to the Social Democrats,” Hardt continued. “There will be a discussion and a balancing of different views of the potential coalition partner. At the end, I think it’s most likely that we will have a coalition with the Social Democrats, but this is not automatic.”
With this necessary diplomacy in mind, CDU leader Friedrich Merz has tried to balance the public’s passion for a rightward political change with rhetoric that doesn’t alienate the SDP or the Greens. Creating distance with the AfD, however, is fine.
“I want to lead a government which stops arguing with itself, a government which is engaged in Europe and ensure that Germany’s voice is heard. That can only happen if we’re economically strong, when young businesses have a future, when we have a better education policy, when our country has a stronger voice,” Merz told the public during a four-way debate on Sunday. “That’s what I stand for — and absolutely not with the AfD. If you want change, then you’ll get that with the CDU.”
Immigration is the defining issue of this election as a spike in terror attacks committed by foreign nationals sours the once immigration-loving country’s taste for progressive border policies.
The AfD is generating the most attention on immigration, advocating sweeping deportations and expectations for foreign nationals to integrate into German culture if they wish to stay. But the CDU is hoping the German people see their party as a more stable route to immigration reform without the AfD’s controversy or baggage.
“There is, from my point of view, only one point of AfD which is remarkable and should be considered in the new government. This is a new approach in immigration policy,” Hardt said. “There are various scales of what and how much to do. AfD is asking for much more than other parties, but we in the CDU are doing those things we’re are in favor of — for example, better control of the inter-European German borders and more strict sending back of illegal [immigrants] and refugees in Germany. I hope that people will see that it’s not necessary to vote for AfD.”
Just over a week ago, an Afghan national legally living in Germany drove a car into a crowd of bystanders, injuring 30 people.
In January, another Afghan migrant killed a 2-year-old and an adult during a stabbing attack at a preschool in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg.
A Saudi Arabian man injured just under 300 people and killed six after ramming his car into a crowd of shoppers are the Magdeburg Christmas market in December.
“We have about five hundred people going around in Germany, not allowed to be here and on the list of those who are under investigation that they might do a brutal terror attack against people in Germany and there’s no legal situation at the moment to put them into a prison and then send them back to their home country or other regions where they come from,” Hardt said. “Looking to change immigration policy is necessary.”
He added that in “all the other political fields — economic policy, European Union policy, foreign policy — AfD is far away from our position.”
Opposition to Russian aggression remains one of the many chasms between the CDU and AfD.
The AfD opposed the Bundestag’s condemnation of Russia in the weeks following the invasion of Ukraine, and the CDU accuses the party of being uncritical of President Vladimir Putin’s machinations for further conquest.
“They are using the wording of Putin in debates at the German Bundestag and also on the campaign trail,” he claimed to the Washington Examiner.
The CDU’s concerns about Russia were exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s recent heel-turn towards the Kremlin against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Looking to what we have heard from Washington over the last few weeks, we are very much irritated about what President Trump mentioned,” Hardt said, referring to the U.S. leader’s rhetoric supporting Russia.
German politicians have for years been arguing about the proper response to Russia’s growing threat to European stability. Following the invasion of Ukraine, Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz delivered an iconic address known as the “Zeitenwende” (English: turning point) in which he promised to revitalize the decrepit German military and contribute heavily to Ukrainian war efforts.
CDU members applauded the decision while the Left and the AfD were irritated by the prospect of devoting German resources to fend off Putin.
Ultimately, the Zeitenwende fizzled without much accomplished.
The CDU is aiming to resurrect those plans for strengthening Germany in foreign policy and defense, and recommitting to back Ukrainian war efforts, hoping the change will spur the rest of the European continent to match their efforts.
The European Union is a dominant trade bloc that wields considerable influence in international commerce, but its defense and diplomatic arm is comparatively limp.
Hardt told the Washington Examiner that bolstering NATO participation will be crucial for asserting European interests on the global stage and that Germany will push other European members of the defense alliance to contribute proportionally.
“In defense, and especially in nuclear deterrence, one plus one is more than two,” Hardt said. “NATO is not only a combination of different nations but also as a whole stronger than every other military power in the world and therefore unable to be overwhelmed.”
“This is what we should not give up and we need to convince our American friends we should not give up that,” he added.
The party also believes that a stronger role in NATO could help keep the relationship between the U.S. and its European allies constructive.
“One of the top projects of the new government in Germany is to increase the good relations with the US, to come back to the track we had in the decades before — also by contributing more to the common values and common interests like defense, as the current government did,” Hardt told the Washington Examiner.
But the relationship between German politics and U.S. politics has become messy in recent weeks.
The CDU is concerned that Trump ally Elon Musk’s high-profile support for AfD is creating disproportionate interest in the second-place party and de-emphasizing what German voters are actually seeking.
Musk is championing the AfD as Germany’s last hope in the face of an entrenched elite unwilling to listen to voters’ demands.
This sentiment was echoed by Vice-President JD Vance when he made an address in Munich last week urging the mainstream parties to end the “firewall” between themselves and the AfD.
“What no democracy — American, German, or European — will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered,” Vance said. “Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There’s no room for ‘firewalls.’ You either uphold the principle or you don’t.”
These remarks baffled CDU members, including Hardt, who sees the rival party as standoffish towards the U.S. in their policy positions, creating a “contradiction to what American politicians are now doing on the part of AfD.”
The AfD is indeed openly critical of their nation’s relationship with the U.S. and the “American Empire” in general. Party leader Alice Weidel has called the German people “slaves” of the U.S. and a “defeated people.”
But she has also expressed optimism about Trump’s administration and the potential for a new era in bilateral relations.
As with most disagreements between the two parties, the core of the issue is their diverging mentalities about how to end the nation’s decline — repair the system that has existed for decades, or burn it all down and start from scratch.
The CDU is sitting comfortably at the top in the polls, but there is still plenty of room for surprises on Sunday when the German people cast their ballots.
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Even a few percentage points difference can affect the viability of hypothetical coalitions, and the AfD is hoping that even in second place they can score enough of the electorate that they become too big to ignore.
But for now, the CDU is looking to fix Germany’s political machine without scrapping the entire engine.
