Merkel’s challenges

The rise of the far right and a fragmenting centre must not divert the German chancellor from building on her record

The emergence of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) as the single largest party after the German elections on Sunday comes as no surprise. Merkel dominated the campaign, and her pro-Europe and liberal stance — both in domestic and international affairs — has been rewarded. These are welcome developments. Politically, however, Merkel’s fourth term may be her most challenging one yet. For the first time since the World War II, an openly xenophobic and anti-Muslim party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), has made its way to the German parliament, with nearly 13 per cent of the vote. Second, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) broke a long-time alliance with the CDU, and both the centrist parties suffered electorally for it, receiving the lowest voteshare since 1952.

The rise of the AfD, formed in 2013 as an anti-EU outfit, is certainly worrying. After the shock of Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory in the US, the fears of a nativist sentiment sweeping Europe were allayed somewhat by the election of Emmanuel Macron in France. The AfD’s electoral appeal (now the third-largest party in Germany), however, shows that the insecurities sparked by the influx of refugees from West Asia since 2015 have influenced decisions in the voting booth. The right-wing party has been particularly successful in erstwhile East Germany, a region that has often felt it has not found a voice since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is by tapping into feelings of exclusion — real or imagined — and connecting them with the influx of minorities and virulent nationalism, that the far right has built a constituency in such a short time.

At the outset of her term, Merkel seems aware of the task ahead of her. She has pledged to listen to AfD voters and “win them back” with “good politics”. In the past, the chancellor’s has taken the steam out of her opponents by appropriating the issues they raised — on same-sex unions and nuclear energy, for example. She may well manage that feat by addressing the exclusion that AfD voters felt without giving in to the temptation of engaging in a “soft xenophobia”. Merkel must not let the pressures of a loud domestic opposition distract from expanding on the foundations she has laid so far: A strong German economy that is the backbone of the EU and a liberal democratic politics that remained a beacon amid fears of an anti-globalisation West.