in Germany, the coalition of Chancellor Olaf Scholz overtaken by the right and the far right

The CDU and its ally the CSU won 29.5% of the votes on Sunday evening, according to national estimates relayed by the European Parliament. A clear and unsurprising victory for the right, which crushes the ruling coalition.

No surprise across the Rhine. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its ally the Christian Social Union (CSU) came first in the European elections in Germany on Sunday June 9. The conservatives obtained 29.5% of the votes, according to national estimates relayed by the European Parliament at 6:30 p.m. The CDU-CSU alliance thus won 29 seats in the European Parliament, which is the current number of seats (23 for the CDU, 6 for the CSU).

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is one of those not registered in the European Parliament since its recent exclusion from the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, gets 16.5% votes and comes second, according to the same source. It obtains 17 seats, compared to 8 currently in the hemicycle of Brussels and Strasbourg. The AfD is thus ahead of the parties in power across the Rhine. The government coalition parties, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP), obtained 14%, 12% and 5% of the votes respectively. The SPD is therefore third with 14 seats (compared to 16 currently), while the Greens obtain fourth place with 12 seats (compared to 21 today).

This defeat was expected for the coalition in power, as the European elections took on the appearance of a referendum for or against the action of the government installed since 2021. The alliance is fractured as much on the question of aid to Ukraine as on the investments necessary for the ecological transition. Consequently, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD has been falling in public opinion for more than two years, just like its green partner, just over a year before the next federal elections, as shown by the average of polls carried out by Politico.

The rise of the far right was also closely monitored across the Rhine. The AfD, which stagnated at around 10% during the last federal elections in 2021, increased its voting intentions to 22% in the European elections at the start of the year. But several scandals subsequently halted this breakthrough. The revelations surrounding a “remigration” project, carried by members of the party, provoked massive demonstrations in the country, and several AfD figures have been sanctioned, by the courts or internally, for comments borrowed from the Hitler regime or minimizing Nazi crimes. To the point that Maximilian Krah, the head of the list, was banned from all electoral meetings.

In recent months, the campaign was also marked by a series of violent acts in Germany, notably the attack on a Social Democratic MEP in Dresden at the beginning of May. As the vote approaches, the themes cited as priorities by the Germans were peace, after more than two years of war in Ukraine, social security and immigration management, recalls the media Deutsche Welle. Next came climate protection and the economy.