Germany’s next government will almost certainly be a coalition of multiple political parties, to form a majority in Parliament. But one party will almost certainly be excluded from that coalition, no matter how well it ultimately performs: the hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
While early exit polls on Sunday showed the AfD in second place, largely on the strength of its opposition to mass migration and its pledge to deport some migrants, every other mainstream German party refuses to invite it into government. That blockade is known in Germany as the “firewall,” and it is a direct result of the country’s post-World War II efforts to suppress parties and voices labeled extreme.
Rival parties cite a wide array of evidence for calling the AfD extreme and for keeping it behind the firewall. Some parts of the AfD have been classified as extremist by German intelligence. Some of its members have been convicted of violating German law against the use of Nazi slogans, and others have been arrested for trying to overthrow the federal government. Recently, an AfD volunteer greeted fellow election canvassers, in front of a New York Times reporter, with a Nazi salute.
To date, Germany has been the most successful major European power at shutting its hard-right party out of power, along with France, where a group of rival parties engaged in strategic voting last summer to deny the hard-right National Rally a parliamentary majority.
Other such firewalls in Europe have fallen or come under pressure in recent years, including in the Netherlands, Hungary and Italy. Earlier this month, U.S. Vice President JD Vance urged all Europeans — including Germans — to work with hard-right parties that he cast as legitimate avatars of public anxiety over immigration. “There is no room for firewalls,” Mr. Vance said in Munich.
Germany’s political parties have promised to maintain the AfD firewall after the election — a pledge reiterated on Sunday night by Friedrich Merz, who is poised to become the next chancellor, after exit polls showed his party in the lead.
But if the AfD has an even stronger than expected showing — well above 20 percent — it could be harder for parties to work around it and may raise new questions about how long the blockade can last.
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