In many European countries, conservative and Christian democratic parties have lost importance. Far-right parties, on the other hand, are successful. Does the CDU face a similar fate in the long term?
The traffic light coalition staggers from one survey low to the next. But the largest opposition party, the CDU, hardly benefits from this. Instead, the AfD is experiencing a high. The reasons are disputed: Does the Union not show a clear edge? Or is she currying too much favor with right-wing populists?
In a European comparison of conservative parties, the CDU and CSU are still doing quite well: with poll values of between 25 and 29 percent, the Union is still in first place. But for how much longer?
Heavy losses in Italy and France
A look at the development of Christian Democratic and moderate-conservative parties in other EU countries shows that in 13 of the 27 EU countries, right-wing populist and right-wing extremist parties have already overtaken the traditional, moderate-conservative parties or are almost on par. Even if the reasons for this are of a different nature, there is a clear tendency from a European point of view.
In some European countries the conservative parties have even ceased to exist or have become meaningless. In Italy, for example, the Christian Democratic “Democrazia Cristiana” almost always provided the prime minister for half a century. The party dissolved after a corruption scandal in the 1990s. The right-wing spectrum in Italy is now dominated by nationalist and right-wing extremist parties in the form of the “Lega” and “Fratelli d’Italia” led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Traditionally conservative forces have also fallen behind in France. Nicolas Sarkozy was the country’s president from 2007 to 2012 – making him the last conservative in office. Today, the Republicans, the successor party to Sarkozy’s UMP, are around ten percent in polls, while the far-right Marine Le Pen can have realistic hopes of winning the next presidential election.
“Grabbed from the right and the middle”
France should set a cautionary tale for the Union, says political scientist Thomas Biebricher of Goethe University Frankfurt. He has done intensive research on the international crisis of conservatism and published the study “Centre/Right”. The moderate conservatives in France would have moved too far to the right under Sarkozy, leaving space in the centre. “France’s Republicans were thus pinched from the right and the center. That’s a scenario that should be kept in mind with the CDU,” explains Biebricher in an interview with the ARD magazine Panorama.
In Germany, the political competition on the right of the Union is currently smelling the dawn. Maximilian Krah, AfD’s top candidate for next year’s European elections and a member of the party’s national executive committee, hopes that the Union will develop in Germany like its sister parties in France and Italy: “The political right will only be successful if the Christian Democrats are disappearing.”
The aim of the AfD is to become the strongest party on the right half of the political spectrum, so the Union is the main strategic opponent of the AfD, Krah said panorama. In polls, the AfD is already in second place with 21 percent and thus better than ever before in the history of the party.
Competitor instead of junior partner
Political scientist Floris Biskamp from the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt has been observing the development of the AfD for a long time. So far there have always been strong forces in the party who wanted to govern in the medium term as a small partner with the Union in order to be able to gradually push the country to the right.
Now those in the AfD are dominant who have completely different things in mind. “They want to change the country fundamentally, which is why they are not available as a junior partner of the Union, but openly declare that they want to destroy it,” says Biskamp. “You should be aware of that in the Union parties. Krah also stands for this line.
How solid is the firewall?
Most recently, ambiguous signals came from the CDU on the question of possible cooperation with the AfD. Officially there is talk of a “fire wall”. But time and again, individual CDU members and parliamentarians, especially in East Germany, think aloud about whether they shouldn’t work together with the AfD in the future. At the same time, there was great outrage, especially from the more liberal, more center-oriented parts of the CDU, when party leader Friedrich Merz in July ZDF-Summer interview relativized the demarcation from the AfD at the municipal level.
It is also Merz who, since taking office as CDU leader in early 2022, has repeatedly irritated with statements, for example when he described the CDU as the “alternative for Germany with substance” and spoke of “social tourism” with regard to war refugees from Ukraine or called sons of migrants “little pashas”.
Political scientist Biebricher criticizes such statements. “When a leader of a party that says it represents the center uses such terms, then he makes such language socially acceptable.” The fact that Merz is distancing itself from the AfD is of little help, says Biebricher. On the contrary: “It is a fatal strategy to insist on exclusion and demarcation on the one hand and to take up rhetoric and topics from the AfD on the other.” This could give the impression that the AfD is actually right in terms of content, but that the Union is only not working with it for reasons of power strategy – and that it is becoming dangerous for the CDU.
Kauder: “Bringing the Christian-Social to the Front”
Could the CDU face a fate similar to that of some of its counterparts in neighboring European countries? No, says Volker Kauder, who was chairman of the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag for 13 years. The CDU is not a classic conservative party. “We do politics on the basis of the Christian image of man, we also have liberal and Christian-social roots,” says Kauder. “We are not narrowly conservative like some of these parties in Europe, which then disappeared.”
But Kauder also warns that the Union needs to put more emphasis on Christian-social issues. “The CDU should not use a phrase like ‘an alternative for Germany with substance’. When we speak, it must be clear that Christian Democrats are speaking and not populists.” If that doesn’t succeed, it would be a serious problem for the CDU in the medium term. “I think it’s totally wrong to speculate that a rapprochement with the AfD could help in the CDU election campaign. In my experience, people then vote for the original.”
The CDU and CSU are still doing well in Europe-wide comparison with other moderate-conservative parties. But the discussions about the right course for the Union in the opposition and about the relationship with the AfD are likely to continue, because next year there will be state elections in Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony in addition to the European elections. The AfD could become the strongest force in all three countries.