the extreme right reaches one of its highest levels since the post-war period

After refugees and Islam, the German far right has a new target: the government’s climate policy. This positioning allows him to reach one of his highest levels of popularity since the post-war period.

If the elections were held this Saturday June 3 and Sunday June 4 in Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party would, according to the latest polls, be neck and neck with the Social Democrats of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, at around 18% , behind the CDU-CSU (29%) but clearly ahead of the losing Greens (14%). Ten years after its creation, the AfD has thus reached a level that it has only experienced once, in the summer of 2018.

The far right favored by the unpopularity of the government

In the Länder of the former communist GDR, the movement even exceeds the 20% mark and could come out on top next year in local elections. In the 2021 elections, the AfD had just exceeded 10%. The AfD benefits first and foremost from the unpopularity of the ruling coalition, whose action, in a context of inflation, recession and anxiety linked to the war in Ukraine, is only welcomed by a German out of five, according to a survey published Thursday by the ARD channel (in German).

For their part, the conservatives of the Christian Unions CDU-CSU, in opposition since the departure of Angela Merkel, are struggling to embody an alternative. “The Union should do its self-criticism and ask itself why we hardly benefit from such great dissatisfaction with the government”, thus strikes Norbert Röttgen, one of the figures of the CDU.

While two out of three AfD voters still place immigration at the top of their concerns, the far-right party seems to be benefiting from its increasingly frontal opposition to pro-climate measures. “We don’t want a climate protection policy because the climate has always changed over time”, asserts Beatrix von Storch, vice-president of the party. AfD MPs are opposed in particular to the closure of coal-fired power stations scheduled for 2030. And only 18% of their voters believe that global warming is due to man, according to a study by Dresden researchers.