AfD opens door to Polish parties: “We are ready to cooperate”

AfD’s result in Saxony-Anhalt has opened a new debate about Germany’s political future. The party won 43.8% in Sunday’s election, while the CDU of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz took 17.2%. SPD received 9.3%, the Greens 8.9% and the Left 8.6%. Sahra Wagenknecht’s Alliance for Reason and Justice crossed the electoral threshold with 5.3%.

The key question is whether AfD can take power in a German state for the first time. That depends on whether it can obtain support in the Magdeburg state parliament, even if the support remains informal. Wagenknecht’s party is not eager to form a coalition with the far right, leaving the shape of any governing arrangement uncertain.

The result could indirectly affect Germany’s relations with Poland, according to the article. Martin Poplawski, a local AfD politician from Görlitz, said the state government itself had no real influence over foreign policy and therefore would not determine relations with Poland. But he described the election result as a political earthquake in Germany.

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The AfD rocket has launched, we caused a political earthquake. The CDU has been pushed to the margins.

“The AfD rocket has launched, we caused a political earthquake. The CDU has been pushed to the margins,” Poplawski said. He argued that AfD’s path toward national power had become easier because of what he called the poor policies of traditional parties. In his view, the CDU-CSU, SPD and Greens had withdrawn into a political bubble and stopped responding to public expectations.

Poplawski also said voters had seen that mainstream parties were not solving their problems. He claimed the political “firewall” designed to exclude extremist parties had collapsed in Saxony-Anhalt because the mainstream had become a minority there. The article explains that “firewall” refers to the traditional parties’ refusal to cooperate with groups considered extremist.

The AfD politician rejected the description of his party as extremist. He said that while others in Europe call it far right, AfD considers itself conservative right. The supplied article ends during that statement.

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The firewall against AfD has collapsed in Saxony-Anhalt.