After immigrants and Islam, the far right in Germany has found a new favorite topic: the rejection of the state environmental policy that has allowed his popularity to skyrocket..

If there were elections this weekend GermanyThe Alternative for Germany (AfD) will go head-to-head with Chancellor Olaf Solz’s Social Democrats (SPD), with both parties gaining around 18% of the vote, trailing the CDU (29%) but well ahead of the Greens (14%).

Ten years after its founding, the AfD manages to achieve its highest percentage of voter intent since the summer of 2018.

How to explain the rise of this party at a time when its leaders are waging an internal struggle for influence, keeping a close eye on the German intelligence services and making no counter proposals?

“Destruction”

First AfD enjoys the unpopularity of the ruling coalitionwhose policies — against the backdrop of rising inflation, a recession and fears of war in Ukraine — are approved by one in five Germans, according to a poll released on Thursday by television channel ARD.

Although they remain at the top of the polls, CDU/CSU conservatives, in opposition since Angela Merkel’s departure, are struggling to present an alternative.

“The union should engage in its own self-criticism and ask itself why we are not really benefiting from such a big dissatisfaction with the government,” commented CDU spokesman Norbert Röttgen, who called the poll showing the AfD a “disaster” with 18%.

While two out of three AfD voters still say immigration is their biggest problem, the far-right party appears to be capitalizing on Germans’ increasingly open opposition to climate protection measures..

“We don’t need a climate protection policy because the climate has always changed over the years,” says Beatrix von Storch, the party’s vice president.

The desire of the Greens to ban new heating installations using fossil fuels as early as next year, which even the ruling coalition opposes, is provided by the AfD.

His co-chairman Tino Chrupalas focused his fire on the Greens, the “only” party with which he would under no circumstances participate in a coalition.

“Citizens are seeing where Green politics is leading, namely economic warfare, inflation and de-industrialization,” he complained to the Funke press group.

“Energy Stagnation”

Thus, the AfD found a Vice-Chancellor and Minister of Economy Robert Habek is his scapegoat.

This potential candidate for chancellor in 2025 is being criticized by Germany’s largest newspaper, Bild, as well as by the CDU. for the restrictions it allegedly wants to impose on the use of cars and individual heating.

According to Mario Voigt, head of the CDU in Thuringia, Hambeck represents an “interventionist state” controlled by the “energy Stasi”, a reference to the notorious police of the former German Democratic Republic.

In this context, the AfD “uses the issue of environmental measures” and succeeds in “mobilizing and creating an atmosphere” of opposition to these policies, political scientist Ursula Munk said.

Münch also notes the results of a 2022 study by scientists at the University of Dresden, according to which there is a link between wind farm plans and AfD voting, mainly in the East German states.

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