There is no chance that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) will be part of the new governing coalition that will be formed after this Sunday’s German election (23 February). Yet the party has dominated the campaign that began when Chancellor Olaf Scholz dissolved the current coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Free Democrats in November 2024.
The AfD is a strange party – and in some ways it is quite different from most of the other European far-right parties that have become more powerful in the past decade. It was formed in 2013 as a party of liberal economics professors who opposed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s approach to the euro crisis – its name was an explicit response to her statement that there was no alternative to bailing out Greece.
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