January 24, 2024 - 7:30am
Talking about the EU has never been regarded as an election-winner in Germany. Until now. Ahead of the European polls later this year, the Right-wing Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) has ramped up its Euroscepticism. Perhaps more surprisingly, pressure from the Left is also mounting as Germany’s newest political party takes aim at Brussels.
Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) was only founded a couple of weeks ago by the eponymous MP and her allies. A hastily assembled skeleton manifesto promised a new kind of politics: Left-wing on economics, Right-wing on social issues such as immigration.
So far, survey results fluctuate wildly, predicting between 3 and 17% of the vote for BSW as Germans are as yet unsure what the party stands for. Its baptism of fire will be the European Parliament elections in June this year, for which it has just unveiled its manifesto, one that is deeply critical of the EU.
The 20-page document doesn’t hold back. It slams Brussels for its “Kafkaesque bureaucratic zeal”, calls Europe an “El Dorado for lobbyists”, and demands an end to “uncontrolled migration”. Wagenknecht and her colleagues argue that they speak for many people when they condemn the “lofty politics of detached EU technocrats who are barely checked by democratic principles” as an “attack on democracy and a threat to their culture and identity”.
This will sound very Right-wing to British ears. Brexiteers have long made similar arguments about taking back control of borders and decision-making processes. The AfD was also founded on similar principles in 2013 when centre-right politicians and journalists formed an interest group against Germany’s intervention in the eurozone crisis, arguing for the abolition of the euro as a common currency.
The AfD’s stance has since become more broadly and sharply Eurosceptic. Co-leader Alice Weidel told the FT this week that her party would offer the German public a Brexit-style referendum if “reform isn’t possible, if we fail to rebuild the sovereignty of the EU member states”. Like the Wagenknecht party, it wants more power for European nation states.
But there are sharp differences between Germany’s political Right and Left when it comes to their shared Euroscepticism. Like many British Brexiteers, the AfD follows a neoliberal line, arguing for economic deregulation. By contrast, BSW wants stronger regulation of the labour market with a view to improving wages and work conditions. It supports the EU’s directive on minimum wage, for instance, which suggests that member states ensure all workers are paid at least 60% of the country’s median wage.
Wagenknecht also wants the EU to resume oil and gas imports from Russia while Europe as “one common house” should push for “constructive peace negotiations” to end the war in Ukraine. BSW would retain the bloc to lend weight to a foreign policy based on disarmament and distance from the US, including the removal of American nuclear weapons from the continent.
Bullish and anti-establishment as such rhetoric may be, it remains to be seen how effective the vocal Euroscepticism of Germany’s political fringes is as an election strategy. Some studies have shown that Germans have become more critical of Brussels than they used to be. In a survey last year, 56% said they didn’t feel the phrase “We as Europeans” included them personally. But another poll showed that three-quarters still think being in the EU is a good thing and fewer than 10% said they don’t want the EU to get involved in areas such as the economy, climate policy, defence, immigration and refugees.
Whether German Euroscepticism has any political legs is doubtful. Yes, immigration, a dysfunctional economy, working poverty and many other issues BSW and AfD lay at the EU’s door are things Germans are deeply concerned about. But so far, their anger has primarily been directed at Berlin, not Brussels.
Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and writer. She is the author, most recently, of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.
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SubscribeThere is no inherent contradiction if unhappiness with the EU’s antics is directed against Berlin rather than Brussels directly. The EU is deliberately structured so that the power resides with the governments of the member states … if they choose to exercise it.
And there is the rub – the current German government is the most mindbogglingly incompetent and destructive government in historical memory. A direct consequence of this incompetence is that the Eurocracy, led by another Troika of clowns, is allowed to run rampant.
Returning sanity to Berlin is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for reigning in Brussels.
“The EU is deliberately structured so that the power resides with the governments of the member states …”
Regardless of whether they choose to exercise it or not, that just isn’t true.
The EU fear leaders who are patriotic and who wish to see powers returned to elected Govts within the bloc. Most of all they fear leaders who galvanise support for such a position.
The EU’s clear mission is the erosion of the nation state – it has always been that – by fair means or foul.
The EU can’t hope to function with 27 sovereign states, each with a representative govt. The EU can only ‘succeed’ in a future where decisions are made above the nation state; by institutions, large corporate interests and financial markets, overseen by politicians who remain entirely unaccountable and never have to subject themselves to the inconvenience of achieving a popular mandate. The commission – who sets such policy – operate with no transparency and under no democratic mandate. In the Eurozone it is even more obvious, with markets and credit ratings agencies able to entirely override the will of the people.
Throughout its existence the European Project has been constantly changing (though never reforming), always moving forward towards further integration, towards political and fiscal union – towards federalism.
If you had any doubts left then you only need look at who was appointed to replace Juncker et al. Open federalists – despite the fact that the EU Parliament put forward more pragmatic candidates who did not want to see the federalist future pushed so hard.
Wishing to be part of a USofE is an entirely credible and valid position – I wholeheartedly and strongly disagree with it, but have no problem with those who genuinely espouse such a view – if they have the moral courage to be open and honest about it. Where I do have a problem is with those who seek to achieve such an aim via the back-door, without gaining the consent of those they wish to govern.
One way to lessen the sense of nationhood, to undermine the patriotism of individual member states, is for them to import vast numbers of new immigrant citizens who have no sense of national identity.
At least for the present, if an honest referendum were held on a federalist future in all EU member states then we’d see a widespread rejection of it. Say the EU laid out a 5 or 10 year plan, leading towards a fully federal European state, then there’d be wholesale opposition to that idea.
Of course there’d be some backing for such a vision amongst Federalist supporters – but country by country, how many would see a majority vote to become a state within a USofE? Germany? Ireland? France? Spain? Italy? The Netherlands? Not a chance. Not even Denmark. …. Maybe, just maybe, Belgium would enjoy the idea, but who’d join them?
But, of course, the EU won’t do that – for the same reason they have never done that. The concerns of the citizenry have never been allowed to stand in the way of the broader EU ambitions. It would happen incrementally, as all these things do – but quite deliberately. As the arch federalist J-C Juncker himself described it, “We decide on something, leave it lying around, and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don’t understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.”
And don’t for a minute imagine that a veto would save a sovereign state from being subsumed – Such trifles have been swatted aside by the commission before now. ‘Unanimous consent’ becomes ‘Qualified Majority voting’ whenever it suits the commission’s broader objectives. I’d no more trust Brussels to honour a veto than I would have trusted Juncker with the keys to the wine cellar.
What is the common denominator amongst all the European Heads of Govt that have been smeared by the EU and their supportive media?…. well, it might be best encapsulated by Georgia Meloni when she said that she believed the EU “should do ‘less, better’, and be a confederation of states, a Europe des Patries, not a federal superstate.” With that, she painted a target on her back.
You set out in great detail the structural flaws inherent in the EU’s “constitution” and the space that gives to determined actors to hijack the EU’s institutions.
In a state constitution, a strong legislature can, if it wants to, hold the executive and the bureaucracy to account.
In the EU, the legislature is deliberately toothless. There is no true executive (in the sense of ministers politically responsible to the sovereign in the form of parliament and the voters), so the bureaucracy have filled the void.
I do not dispute the picture you paint; I just dispute your apparent view that a change of direction is impossible. Bureaucracies are powerful in their lethargy, but also completely unideological and amoral. So long as their existence is not endangered, they will implement whatever policy is asked of them. That is why it was so easy to get to where we are. With enough will – mediated through EU member national governments -, reversing course is just as possible.
We can all name untold powers the EU has accrued for itself. Can you name any it has relinquished?
The EU has no reverse gear, it is designed that way, it has been a deliberate policy of those that created and maintained it. Right back to Jean Monnet.
Of course I can’t speak for all 17.4 million Leave voters in the UK (nor the ever-growing number of Eurosceptics across the EU) but I’d hazard that a very large number of them would accept that the Common Market made sense. A group of entirely sovereign European nations agreeing to cooperate on trade. Had we remained simply that there’d have been a willingness – even enthusiasm – for the project.
But since Maastricht, it was the creeping usurpation of powers without a democratic mandate that caused the rising Euroscepticism (not merely here in the UK but across Europe). 40 years after our vote to stay in, the EEC had morphed into an entirely different organisation that had accrued untold additional powers and areas of responsibilities (and sought to accrue yet more) without seeking the consent of the governed.
Having realised too late that the Lisbon treaty was not just the ‘tidying up exercise’ we’d been told but was in fact the European Constitution in all but name that had been rejected by so many, any thought of further renegotiation withe the EU was quashed by Giscard d’Estaing with a typically haughty, “No, there is no alternative”.
Like it or not, Brexit was the alternative.
A growing number of Germans are beginning to realise that Dexit (or Kr-Out) is perhaps their best hope. It will be fascinating to see it they are treated the same as leave voting Brits.
“Kr-out” superb 🙂
I live in Germany and I could never see a majority here voting for Dexit. They’re too in love with the Establishemnt to do that.
You are absolutely right.
Paddy: please stand for Parliament. I’ll vote for you!!
Absolutely brilliant submission: could not agree more and wish I had written it. NB regarding the responsibilities the EU takes over from sovereign states, I love the use of the weasel word “Competence” when what they mean is “power taken from sovereign states to be administered within the EU by career EU politicians” (like that ghastly Verhofstadt)
Worth remembering that there are still many Germans committed to peace, and many many more who know darn well who blew up Nordstream.
They are Germany first, and they see the EU as an institutional embodiment of their country’s servitude to the American Empire.
We’re all committed to peace until we get invaded. Making the country’s energy policy dependent on a neighbouring military aggressor seems a strange way of committing to peace.
By ‘neighbouring military aggressor’ do you mean the British / US navy seals who most likely blew up a multibillion euro piece of energy infrastructure?
Because yes, that is a lesson for Germany to learn.
I’m a great believer in self-determination – it’s fundamental for any free society.
There was always a much stronger and more politically coherent case for quitting the EU from the Left, rather than the Right.
But let’s not call it Dexit.
I’d suggest Kr-Out would be funnier
Upvoted for the punchline!
Same.
Why was there? It is mainly the Left today which overwhelmingly supports unaccountable bureaucracies, institutions and quangos which are dominated by progressive groupthink.
However illogically, the EU being essentially pro capitalist or even neoliberal, this includes the belief that a political union of European states and the enormous diminution of electoral democracy that entails is ipso facto a “good thing”. There used to be an alternative tradition, in the days of Tony Benn and Peter Shore, but it’s almost non existent today.
I would love it if Euroscepticism takes a Corbyn bent rather than the Rees-Mogg etc. one everyone assumes will prevail. The anti-EU right have taken the free movement of goods, free-floating currencies (or single currency), no state-aid stuff for granted and targeted the immigration and regulation.
Let the EU ordoliberal EU project crumble and have socialism and sovereignty prevail.
Then in ten years’ time after a few currency crises and everyone becoming poorer we’ll be reminded why they made the EU in the first place.
It was of course the British Labour Party that opposed the UK joining the Common Market in 1973 and Harold WIlson had to allow many Labour MPs, including major figures such as Tony Benn and Peter Shore, to campaign against remaining in the CM in the 1975 referendum. Benn’s prescient objection was on sovereignty grounds rather than economic ones.
Alice Weidel’s (AfD) posturing on holding a Brexit-style referendum should be taken with a pinch of salt. If given the same choice were given to Germans as the Brits were given in 2016, only a small minority would actually vote leave, no more than 20%.
But I do buy into the argument that more and more Germans are dissatisfied with the current state of the EU and how it’s run and would like to see some change there.
And tbh I think that is what Weidel is ultimately aiming at. She must know that – even in the unlikely event that a Dexit referendum is held and that Germans vote to leave, Germany is far too bound into the EU and its structures to ever leave.
While Britain’s peripheral position in the EU with a history of lukewarm participation and opt-outs left right and centre (most crucially the euro) enabled it to get out – that semi-detached and awkward relationship meant that Brexit barely created a ripple in terms of thinking whether the EU should be changed.
Conversely, Germany is trapped in the EU, but its position right at the heart and soul of things would mean any expression of mass dissatisfaction, coupled with the threat (however unrealistic) of a Dexit-y dolly-throwing incident would make the desire/need to change much harder to ignore.
Interested to see where this new Wagenknecht alliance goes. Not sure about the woman’s politics but she is very clever, ambitious and unbelievably courageous. And I have a lot of respect for that.
Smart comment as usual KE.
Katherine,
I think Germany, under Mutti and with French approval, might just have been able to force the EU into a change of direction – though even then I doubt they’d ever have persuaded Brussels to return a degree of autonomy and divergence to member state governments.
But under Olaf Scholz and without Macron on-side, I cannot see Germany being able to move that needle one iota – regardless of the wishes of German voters.
Sovereignty was considered a parochial concern of little-Englanders with no vision of a great and glorious European future, though it was telling that when Michel Barnier ran for office in France the rhetoric fell away. Monsieur Barnier – Mr Europe – the man for whom the 4 Freedoms were indivisible and entirely sacrosanct, the man who refused to accept the idea that the EU could or should ever give an inch in negotiation, and for whom ECJ edicts were as unchallengeable as the word of God. All well and good whilst he sat cocooned in his Ivory Tower at the Berlaymont, part of the technocratic priesthood dictating doctrine, safe from the inconvenience of ever having to achieve a popular mandate. But then, suddenly, channelling his inner Farage, and taking the line that “We must regain our legal sovereignty so that we are no longer subject to the rulings of the European Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights.”
Isn’t it illuminating that even the most staunch defender of the EU has to turn against the institutions and point out their obvious faults if he wants to appeal to an actual voter?
Of course the concerns of the citizenry have never been allowed to stand in the way of the broader EU ambitions.
Europhiles and Remainers scoffed at British Leave voters for wanting a return of sovereignty, but watching the rise in support for right and hard-right parties across the bloc some are possibly changing their minds. There was a false assumption that the lack of influence any one nation has over the EU was unimportant because they had faith that the EU would always continue to pursue policies they supported. Plenty of people across the bloc are wondering if their faith was perhaps a wee bit misplaced.
The Germans were happy enough to subsidize Europe when the tacit understanding was that Germany would de facto run Europe.
Now it is clear German taxpayers are funding Europe but it is not Germany but rather the WEF that is actually governing Europe, that deal won’t hold.
This WEF stuff is just ridiculous. It is a talking shop – of admittedly influential people. Putin has actually attended – is he part of the dreaded “world government conspiracy”? People thinking alike is most likely to explained by groupthink.
They were happy when it was fortress BMW, and Castle VW.
Now the Chinese are coming not only is German industrial production in recession for the thick end of nine months, the dismantling of the Mittelstand Combustion Engine supply chain structure is only just beginning. The new supply chain is in China, whether Germany likes it not.
Tesla is still worth more than the entire European Car industry, BYD may soon be heading that way.
The upheaval inside the German economic model, so based upon cars, seems to be thought of as temporary, but it may be epochal, and that will have enormous ramifications for the EU if it is.
And of course EU-scepticism in the UK started slowly and gained momentum.
I agree with much of what you said. Sahra Wagenknecht is a very impressive debater and intelligent woman, but she basically is the Corbyn of Germany. All the people in this new party a pure Marxists. Wagenknecht herself was member of the SED, the Socialist Party of East Germany. Her political partner and running mate is Amira Mohamet Ali, former member of the Linke, who recently turned 180 percent on her stand on migration. She now seems to have adopted Wagenknecht‘s position to severely limit the huge influx of migrants into Germany and follows her urge to cut asylum seekers‘ benefits.
Although some Germans find Wagenknecht attractive and an eloquent talker, most are deeply suspicious of her new Party. I very much doubt, that it‘ll have a chance to get into the next Parliament and reaching 5% or more.
AfD is split on economics and you have some people, who lean towards a more libertarian market economy, but there are also AfD politicians, especially in the East, who prefer a more socialist approach.
There will be no Dexit, because many Germans seem to feel first „European“ and secondly German. After WWII the EU was basically founded to contain Germany, and Germans seem to be happy with that. The AfD might fight for future reforms in the EU, but there is no mainstream desire in the country to break away.
Good article by the excellent Hoyer, but Germany won’t leave the EU. They’ve seen the mess the UK has got itself into over this. We are a cautionary tale, like Hansel and Gretel going too deep into woods.
The British public are being fed a lie since Brexit that every single problem the country faces is because it left the EU. As far as I can see, the problems facing the British are the same ones that are facing the entire EU. Did you know, for example that the German economy shrank last year?
That can’t be true, both main parties are steering clear of the Brexit question and no one takes any notice of the Lib Dems. GB News follows your line but they do enjoy a good conspiracy theory.
Since when is immigration control a right win g issue?
“the AfD follows a neoliberal line, arguing for economic deregulation. By contrast, BSW wants stronger regulation of the labour market”
The idea is to disentangle the EU from national governance so such questions can be settled at home, not in the shadowy recesses of Bureaucratic Brussels.
I suspect that the Germans are going to have to learn the hard way.
I just wonder if it will be too late to save their national identity and their culture and probably their economy before they do.
Let’s face it. The goal of the EU was always to form a United States of Europe that could challenge the US.
It was always doomed to fail because the US was created under very different and unique circumstances that cannot be duplicated in Europe. The strength of the US comes from it homogeneity. You can go from Maine to California, from Dallas to Miami, and you know you are in an American city. Are there variations? Sure, but the commonality it clear. There is a common culture, common language, common history and common institutions from one state to the next. Europe could conceivably create a federal system with a powerful central government but it will never be able to and does not seem to want to, replicate the uniformity of US states. You cannot create another power like the US without giving up national identity, national language and national cultures.
Beyond that, it was created on the assumption that Russia would be integrated into the European sphere and would play nice. It also failed to contemplate the rise of China.
The EU and the euro were always a flawed idea born out of optimism resulting from the end of the Cold War and the belief in the end of history. Yes, the old Cold War ended but great power struggles did not and Europe is too weak to not have to pick a side, it is not now and will likely never be a great power.
The Europeans have to pick. US Hegemony, Chinese hegemony or Russian Hegemony or a combination of Russia and China. Those powers are not going to let Europe play all sides and if Europe does try to play all sides it will get picked apart by the three of them, it will become like China during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, partitioned and exploited.
I’m sure the (no doubt WEF-driven) insistence that we need massive conscription to prepare to attack and invade Russia will tip the Germans over the edge into actual Dexit.
What, again! Anti EU sentiment in any nation often signals national #politicians have failed to appoint the correct officials to EU positions.
Possibly, voters to select competent governments?
How the EU works: who runs the EU? – Full Fact