The elections to the European Parliament divided Germany almost beyond the borders of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic.
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If you look at the results of the European elections on the map, you can immediately see that Germany is divided into two parts, and almost exactly outside the former GDR and West Germany.
In the “old” federal states, the CDU/CSU bloc wins almost everywhere; only in some large cities, such as Hamburg, Kiel, Münster, Heidelberg or Freiburg, the majority of voters voted for the Greens. Bremen, Bremerhaven and Herne remain the last strongholds of the SPD, where Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party occupies a leading position.
In the “new” federal states, almost the entire map is painted blue – the party color of the Alternative for Germany. The exceptions were Berlin and Potsdam, where the majority of residents voted for the Greens. Also in the Eichsfeld district in Thuringia, the CDU won the most – otherwise, the border according to the voting results exactly corresponded to the former border between Germany and the GDR.
Political analysts say that following the results of the European Parliament elections, the Alternative for Germany has finally established itself as the second most powerful party in Germany.
Although it trails the CDU/CSU by 14%, it is two points ahead of the chancellor’s SPD party and four points ahead of the Greens. In the east of the country, AfD is the strongest party. The firewall designed to marginalize the AfD has failed, says Hermann Binkert, chairman of the INSA public opinion research institute.
According to the Federal Election Commission, turnout in the last election was 64.8% and reached a new high since the reunification of Germany.
In Germany, Scholz’s socialists took a dismal third place (14%) after the far-right pro-Russian Alternative for Germany party (16.5%). In first place is the opposition conservative Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU, 29.5%).
The Social Democrats are completely defeated, and Scholz has long heard calls from the center-right to announce early elections. Now the head of Bavaria, Markus Söder from the CSU, is actively demanding this.
Meanwhile, Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), which has managed to become the biggest political force in the central European country, is pushing the European political family Identity and Democracy (ID) to bring back the Alternative for Germany. This is reported by Euractiv.
The ID group, on the initiative of Marine Lepin, expelled the AfD from its ranks in the EP. Le Pen feared that the AfD’s extremist views could alienate some of its electorate.
The Austrian Freedom Party (this is also an anti-Ukrainian party) wants to convince L Pen that it is worth “forgiving” the German right-wing populists, and then the ID group in the European Parliament will grow to a three-digit figure (currently it is approximately 58 legislators).
The AfD was kicked out of the ID after a series of scandals. Numbers one and two on the AfD electoral list, Maximilian Kra and Petr Bystron, have been accused of receiving money from Russia through a propaganda network, and Kra himself is under investigation for suspected close ties to China. The final straw was a controversial interview Cra gave to Italy’s La Repubblica in May, where he said that not every member of the Nazi SS during the Third Reich was “automatically a criminal.”
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.