The far right’s win in Germany is sending a chill through the establishment in Europe

Michael Brandt/dpa/picture-alliance/AP

Alternative for Germany (AfD) may not have won the supermajority it sought in the Saxony-Anhalt state election on Sunday, but the far-right party did take another giant step toward power in a country whose postwar democracy was designed to prevent the return of right-wing extremism. The AfD’s win, which co-leader Alice Weidel described as “historic,” also showed that in Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, the center is not holding as firmly as it once did.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the AfD’s victory has shaken his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) “to its very foundations” and would have “consequences” reaching well beyond the region.

“It is an election result we cannot simply move past as if nothing happened,” he said Monday. “It is the most severe election defeat the CDU has suffered in years, indeed in decades.”

On Sunday, the CDU didn’t just lose support to the AfD at the margins, but more than half its 2021 vote outright, with the AfD more than doubling its own share in the former East German state to 44% in a single electoral cycle.

The AfD was already the largest opposition party in the federal parliament in Berlin, making the “eastern exception” argument — that this is a regional, post-Communist phenomenon — harder to sustain. The CDU’s rhetoric on migration has shifted further right as the AFD’s popularity has grown. And with each win at state level, the “Brandmauer,” or “firewall against the far-right,” that prevents ultra-nationalist parties like AfD from joining ruling coalitions is being tested a little more by parliamentary arithmetic as much as by principle. The question now is: How much longer can a democratic argument be made to justify the firewall?

A similar question is also facing Europe as a whole . In Brussels, the so-called “cordon sanitaire,” the European Union’s own version of the far-right firewall, is also under pressure from mathematics.

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Three hard-right groups hold 196 seats combined in the European Parliament, representing parties from more than a dozen member states. Together, they represent the Parliament’s second-largest force by seat count, even though the three rarely vote as a bloc. And while they remain walled off from the EU’s top jobs, they are already reshaping the organization’s debates on migration, aid to Ukraine and the “Green Deal” aimed at reaching climate neutrality.

At national level, too, far-right parties now lead coalitions in Italy and the Czech Republic and serve as junior governing partners in Finland, Croatia, Slovakia and Sweden. And where the far right doesn’t hold power, it is still setting the terms of the debate: The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) topped Austria’s national vote in 2024, Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) remains one of the largest blocs in the Dutch parliament despite the collapse of its coalition last year, and Marine Le Pen ’s National Rally has been France’s most consistently popular party for years. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has spent four years proving a party with post-fascist roots can govern from the center-right without spooking financial markets.

Hungary’s election in April showed that the far right’s advance is not purely linear: Péter Magyar’s center-right Tisza party ousted Viktor Orbán’s illiberal Fidesz party in a landslide, ending 16 years of authoritarian rule and proving that entrenched incumbents can still lose.

But the far right doesn’t need to win everywhere, every time; it has already changed what Europe’s mainstream parties have to contend with and campaign against.

The historic mainstream now also faces increasing pressure from abroad. No longer just from Moscow, but also from Washington and MAGA, too. Elon Musk endorsed the AfD ahead of last year’s federal election, appearing at a campaign rally to declare it would “save the future of civilization.” US Vice President JD Vance used his 2025 Munich Security Conference speech to attack Germany’s far-right firewall directly and met with Weidel days before the vote.

One senior German politician at the time called Vance’s support “a big boost to the far right in Germany and in Europe.” AfD figures campaign on the idea of establishing good relations with both the White House and the Kremlin, as Saxony-Anhalt’s own AfD candidate, Ulrich Siegmund , did in the run-up to Sunday’s vote.

None of which should distract from the very real home-grown popularity of far-right parties in Europe, which is rooted in domestic grievances over immigration, stagnant wages, deindustrialization and the failure of mainstream parties to address that discontent. What it does mean, though, is that Europe’s far right isn’t simply rising on its own. Rather, it is being actively reinforced by outside powers that have their own reasons — ideological and geostrategic — to want Europe’s postwar center to fracture.

The question now is just how unstoppable the far right’s rise in Europe really is. The answer should come into sharper focus over the next 18 months, as France heads toward a 2027 presidential race. Le Pen, the far-right leader, now appears to be the favorite in opinion polls.

In the shorter term, voters in Berlin and Mecklenburg, in northeastern Germany, head to the polls in under two weeks. Those local elections could show whether Sunday’s result in Saxony-Anhalt represents a ceiling for the far right’s rise in Europe — or just its latest floor.

Michael Brandt/dpa/picture-alliance/AP

德国另类选择党（AfD）虽然在周日的萨克森-安哈尔特州选举中未能赢得其所寻求的绝对多数席位，但在这个战后民主制度旨在防止右翼极端主义卷土重来的国家，这个极右翼政党仍然向权力迈出了重要一步。AfD的胜利，正如其联合主席爱丽丝·魏德尔所言，是“历史性的”，也表明在德国，如同在欧洲其他地区一样，中间力量的根基已不如以往稳固。

德国总理弗里德里希·默茨表示，德国选择党的胜利动摇了他所在的保守派基督教民主联盟（基民盟）的“根基”，并将产生远超该地区的“后果”。

“我们不能对这个选举结果视而不见，仿佛什么都没发生过，”他周一表示。“这是基民盟多年来，乃至几十年来遭受的最惨重的选举失败。”

周日，基民盟不仅在边缘选区失去了对德国选择党的支持，而且在 2021 年大选中直接失去了超过一半的选票，德国选择党在一个选举周期内，在前东德州的得票率翻了一番多，达到 44%。

德国选择党（AfD）已是柏林联邦议会中最大的反对党，这使得“东部例外”论——即认为这只是后共产主义时代的区域性现象——难以站得住脚。随着德国选择党支持率的上升，基民盟（CDU）在移民问题上的言论也进一步右倾。随着各州选举的胜利，阻止像德国选择党这样的极端民族主义政党加入执政联盟的“防火墙”（Brandmauer）正面临着来自议会政治格局和原则层面的双重考验。现在的问题是：民主论证还能支撑多久，才能让这道防火墙继续存在下去？

整个欧洲也面临着类似的问题。在布鲁塞尔，所谓的“卫生警戒线”（欧盟版的极右翼防火墙）也受到了数学的压力。

Florian Gaertner/dpa/picture-alliance/AP

三个极右翼团体在欧洲议会共占196个席位，代表着来自十几个成员国的政党。尽管这三个团体很少联合投票，但它们合计是议会席位第二多的政党。虽然它们仍然无法在欧盟高层任职，但它们已经开始影响欧盟关于移民、对乌克兰援助以及旨在实现气候中和的“绿色协议”等问题的讨论。

在国家层面，极右翼政党如今也在意大利和捷克共和国领导执政联盟，并在芬兰、克罗地亚、斯洛伐克和瑞典担任执政伙伴。即使在极右翼尚未掌权的国家，它们仍然主导着舆论：奥地利自由党（FPÖ）在2024年奥地利大选中胜出；尽管去年执政联盟瓦解，海尔特·维尔德斯的自由党（PVV）仍然是荷兰议会最大的党团之一；玛丽娜·勒庞的国民联盟多年来一直是法国最受欢迎的政党。在意大利，总理乔治娅·梅洛尼用了四年时间证明，一个有着后法西斯主义根源的政党可以以中右翼路线执政，而不会引发金融市场恐慌。

匈牙利四月份的选举表明，极右翼的崛起并非完全是线性的：彼得·马扎尔领导的中右翼蒂萨党以压倒性优势击败了维克托·欧尔班领导的非自由主义政党青民盟，结束了长达16年的威权统治，并证明根深蒂固的执政者仍然有可能落败。

但极右翼并不需要每次都取得胜利；它已经改变了欧洲主流政党必须面对和反对的对象。

如今，传统主流政治也面临着来自海外日益增长的压力。这种压力不仅来自莫斯科，也来自华盛顿和“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）运动。埃隆·马斯克在去年的联邦选举前公开支持德国另类选择党（AfD），并在竞选集会上宣称该党将“拯救文明的未来”。美国副总统约翰·迪·万斯在2025年慕尼黑安全会议上发表讲话，直接抨击德国极右翼势力，并在投票前几天与魏德尔会面。

当时一位德国资深政治家称，万斯的支持“极大地鼓舞了德国乃至欧洲的极右势力”。德国选择党（AfD）的竞选纲领是与白宫和克里姆林宫都建立良好关系，正如萨克森-安哈尔特州的AfD候选人乌尔里希·西格蒙德在周日投票前所做的那样。

所有这些都不应掩盖欧洲极右翼政党在本土日益增长的影响力，这种影响力根植于民众对移民、工资停滞、去工业化以及主流政党未能解决这些不满情绪的强烈不满。然而，这也意味着欧洲极右翼势力的崛起并非偶然。相反，它正受到外部势力的积极推动，这些势力出于意识形态和地缘战略的考量，希望欧洲战后中心力量的分裂。

现在的问题是，极右势力在欧洲的崛起究竟有多么势不可挡。随着法国即将迎来2027年总统大选，未来18个月内，这个问题的答案应该会更加清晰。极右翼领导人勒庞目前在民意调查中似乎领先。

短期来看，柏林和德国东北部梅克伦堡的选民将在不到两周的时间内前往投票站。这些地方选举的结果或许能够揭示，周日萨克森-安哈尔特州的选举结果究竟代表着极右势力在欧洲崛起的上限，还是仅仅是其最新一次的下限。