Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Sunday 20 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
‘It’s an earthquake that is changing history’, wrote the Italian newspaper La Repubblica in September after the right-populist AfD won an important state election in eastern Germany. This was just the latest highlight in a series of spectacular election gains for the populists. Even in the European elections in June, which were accompanied by countless scanda...
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Sunday 20 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
‘It’s an earthquake that is changing history’, wrote the Italian newspaper La Repubblica in September after the right-populist AfD won an important state election in eastern Germany. This was just the latest highlight in a series of spectacular election gains for the populists. Even in the European elections in June, which were accompanied by countless scandals involving the party’s main candidate, the AfD came second. It finished ahead of all the current governing coalition parties.
The AfD is not the only populist party that has been able to celebrate spectacular successes. In January, a new left-wing populist party, the BSW, was founded. It has also managed to overtake the government parties in recent elections – winning over 10 per cent of the votes from a standing start. The established parties, meanwhile, are struggling to secure majorities, with the SPD only just beating the AfD in the recent Brandenburg election.
The rise of populism in Germany has come as a surprise for many observers. Less than a decade ago, the country was still perceived as a somewhat boring anchor of stability in Europe. Thus, in 2017, the influential Bertelsmann foundation claimed that ‘the majority of Germans reject populist views’. What has changed? Is it the voters or the politics – or both?
The challenges the country is currently facing are formidable. The economy is faltering, contracting by 0.1 per cent in the second quarter of 2024. ‘The location is simply too expensive, the infrastructure too dilapidated, the bureaucracy too paralysing’, is the pessimistic verdict of the German Economic Institute. As the government continues to pursue its immensely costly aim of Net Zero, more people are beginning to feel the squeeze in living standards.
In the past, German governments tended to solve problems with money, by increasing subsidies and social welfare. But now the government is dealing with a serious budget shortfall. A tighter budget has already led some to question whether the government will be able to uphold its promise – made in 2022 response to the Ukraine war – to increase its defence expenditure.
To many Germans, it seems as if the good times are over. Apart from the economic problems, there are also political issues. One of these is mass migration. After a series of deadly Islamist attacks, and as a reaction to the recent successes of the populists, the government has promised to reintroduce border controls, albeit only for a limited period of time. But polls show that very few voters still trust the established parties to really solve these problems.
Is the EU’s most populous country facing years of internal divisions, or even decline? Which forces or groups will be able to lead the country towards the necessary changes? Will Germany become the sick man of Europe? And if so, what will this mean for the rest of the continent?
SPEAKERS
Alexander Horn
economic commentator; management consultant
Lysia Leal
student of City & Regional Planning, Technische Universität Berlin
Dr Patrik Schumacher
principal, Zaha Hadid Architects; author, The Autopoiesis of Architecture and Tectonism – Architecture for the 21st Century
CHAIR
Sabine Beppler-Spahl
chair, Freiblickinstitut e.V; CEO, Sprachkunst36; Germany correspondent, spiked
