Dates

Majorities at any price?

The election campaign for the Bundestag elections on February 23, 2025 took a dramatic turn just a few weeks before the election: From the opposition, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag brought about a resolution for the first time at the end of January that deliberately relied on the approval of the AfD or condoned it. Two days later, a bill that was to be passed according to the same logic failed, but only after heated discussions in the Bundestag, parliamentary groups and the public - and after a critical public statement by former Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel - and only because MPs stayed away from the vote. This deliberate acceptance of tolerating political initiatives in the Bundestag by the AfD was seen by many as a breach of taboo, as a fall of the so-called "firewall" to the AfD, even as the opening of a "gateway to hell" (as the chairman of the SPD parliamentary group drastically put it). Now the election is over. The AfD has doubled its share of voters compared to 2021 and will enter the 21st German Bundestag with a parliamentary group that is 56 seats smaller than that of the designated governing CDU/CSU group. What happens now? Who will work with whom? How will which majorities be formed and for what? How will the AfD be dealt with - in Berlin, in the majority of "blue" East Germany and in the many areas in the West where the AfD also won large shares of second votes? What does this tremendous rise of the AfD mean for democracy in Germany?

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