Like in the rest of Europe, the European Parliamentary elections in Germany took place against the backdrop of a decade-long decline of confidence in governments and political parties. Growing sections of European societies experience life in the throngs of rapid and unpredictable change, driven by intersecting crises including economic stagnation, rising public debt, increasing inflation, growing inequality, precarious work and employment, a shortage of housing, environmental deterioration, and a decaying public infrastructure, such as transportation, public health, primary education, social security and care for the elderly. This has created a widespread sense of uncertainty and anxiety about the future, and a declining respect for politics as usual, which is considered to be unable to protect the lives of ordinary citizens from ever more threatening individual and collective risks. Not an easy time for governments and the parties that run them.
The most significant outcomes of the elections in Germany on 9 June are the relative stability of the conservative CDU/CSU alliance; the disastrous losses of the three coalition parties, the SPD, the Greens, and FDP; the corresponding gains of the AfD; and the rise of a new party, Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which is a breakaway from an increasingly insignificant Die Linke.
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