the other face of German politics

José Manuel Lamarque introduces us to a German politician, Sahra Wagenknecht, member of the Bundestag, with journalist Kai Littmann, director of the site eurojournalist.eu.

Sahra Wagenknecht appeared in the 90s. She came from the Communist Party of East Germany. She joined Die Linke, the far-left party in West Germany. Her husband is the famous Oskar Lafontaine who has now left German politics. Sahra Wagenknecht enters the European Parliament. Decryption with journalist Kai Littmann, director of the site eurojournalist.eu.

franceinfo: Sahra Wagenknecht created her own party, the BSW, the Bundesrat Sahra Wagenknecht, that is to say the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, a political party which bears the name of its leader…

Kai Littmann: Yes, it is quite rare for a party to be named after the name of its founder. Sahra Wagenknecht is a pure product of the former GDR. Born in 1969 in Jena in the GDR, she joined the Free Youth, which was the youth organization of the SED, the single party, very early on. After the fall of the Wall, she made all these changes that the party made, SED becoming PDS, then WSAG, then Die Linke.

So she did all this training, and last November, she announced that she wanted to leave Die Linke. She kept her mandate in the Bundestag, she was followed by around ten deputies, which meant that Die Linke lost its status as a political group in the Bundestag, in the German Parliament and in January, it created this famous Bundes Sahra Wagenknecht who will now participate in the European election, and who definitely has the wind in her sails.

The wind in its sails, with a political line that still surprises everyone?

Yes, because it is a completely explosive mixture, between extreme, extreme left positions and at the same time, on certain subjects, she defends positions which are downright compatible with the extreme right AFD. And this mix is ​​found in the program for Europeans. It is difficult to really place her on the political spectrum and yet, in the polls, she goes from success to success.

She is not Atlanticist, she is rather pro-Russian. Regarding immigration, she has an “atypical” position, shall we say?

Yes, she demands that all social assistance be cut off from refugees who have been refused asylum, but who are still tolerated on German territory. She wants to create asylum centers outside the European Union. And these are positions that can be applauded by the AFD, but not really by left-wing parties.

And regarding Ukraine, does she also have convictions?

She demands that supplies of arms and money to Ukraine now be coupled with the obligation to enter into negotiations. No negotiations, no more weapons, no more money. And she has never hidden her wish to see relations with Russia revived, to intensify trade with Russia, especially in terms of energy. This is a position that is not defended by any other party in Germany.

And at the European level?

So at the European level, there we find a bit of the left side of the Bundes Sahra Wagenknecht. She wants to implement a minimum wage of 14 euros per hour across all of Europe, which seems impossible to implement given the wage differences between different European countries. She also wants to strengthen subsidiarity at the European level, saying that what can be regulated at the local, national level must be regulated at the local, national level. Europe must stop interfering in all issues that concern Europeans.

Predictions for the European elections regarding Sahra Wagenknecht?

Currently in the polls, it is given between 5 and 7% for Europeans. So she will send between seven and nine deputies to the new Parliament.

For Germany, we talked about this party, we will say in quotation marks, Turkish, the DAVA which will enter the European Parliament, there is the AFD, the German extreme right, now it is Sahra Wagenknecht. But what will the others do?

It’s going to be a bit of a mess, because Germany doesn’t have a 5% threshold for the European election. So in certain constituencies, it is enough to have 60 or 70,000 votes to have a seat in the European Parliament. There are 35 parties which have been authorized to participate in the European elections. Among these 35 parties, there are a good twenty which have a real chance of sending at least one MEP to Strasbourg.

The BSW even risks being one of the parties which send the most deputies to the new European Parliament. And that, indeed, we have never seen that a party three months after its creation, already knows such success at the electoral level…