Battered and unloved, Germany’s coalition likely to hang on after regional losses to far right

BERLIN — The far right’s first victory in a German state election in the post-war era prompted soul-searching in Berlin on Monday, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s battered and unloved coalition looked as if it would hold together.

All three parties in Scholz’s centre-left coalition suffered painful losses while the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a new anti-establishment populist party booked record gains in the eastern states of Thuringia and Saxony on Sunday.

Scholz, a Social Democrat, described the results as “bitter” but Finance Minister Christian Lindner rejected suggestions that his neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), who fared the worst of all coalition partners, should quit the government.

With a year to go to national elections, the results are nonetheless likely to foment tensions in a coalition riven by ideological differences and struggling to deal with the fallout from the Ukraine war including a cost-of-living crisis.

The AfD became the first far-right party to win a state legislature election in Germany since World War Two with its 32.8% showing in Thuringia. And it came a close second, at 30.6%, behind the mainstream conservative Christian Democrats in neighbouring Saxony.

The FDP were crushed, turfed out of the Thuringia parliament and unable to reach the 5% threshold to re-enter the Saxony legislature. At a news conference, Thomas Kemmerich, the FDP’s vanquished candidate in Thuringia, said the result showed it was time for the FDP to plough its own path.

“No,” said Lindner. “There we don’t agree. It’s absolutely essential that we give the economy more stimulus,” he added, saying the pro-business FDP was needed in government to do that. The final week of the campaign was overshadowed by the killing, allegedly by an illegal immigrant, of three people in a stabbing attack that lent momentum to the AfD.

In that light, Lindner said the FDP was prepared to countenance changes to Germany’s post-war democratic constitution or European law that would help curb immigration.

Analysts warn that the far right’s growing clout could damage Europe’s largest economy by deterring investors and skilled labor. “It’s a bad signal for international investors,” said DekaBank strategist Jochim Schallmayer.