by Jeroen Bouterse
The Brandmauer – the political ‘firewall’ against the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland – is under duress. It has been clear for a while that the state election in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6th would make government formation there without the AfD either difficult, extremely difficult, or arithmetically impossible. As I submit this column, it looks like the second.
Politicians and commentators are frantically reflecting, not just on the processes driving the electoral successes of the far right and on the future of democracy, but also on the wall metaphor. Some get technical. Asked about the durability of the Brandmauer in an interview with Der Spiegel, Saxony’s prime-minister Michael Kretschmer started lecturing on how fire-resistance is measured. “F60, for example, means that the building component can remain structurally sound for 60 minutes in the case of fire.” The journalist felt compelled to interject: “where are you going with this?”
In a volume of essays on the Brandmauer published this summer, almost all contributions happily explore the image. Some of them even refer, somewhat boldly, to that other wall that is among Germany’s core political memories. The Berlin Wall is the symbol of a failing political system, scared that its people would abandon it. It is also famous for falling at the hands of those people. Journalist Stefan Aust draws the lesson most directly: “just like the ‘anti-fascist protection wall’ did not save the GDR from the democratic collapse of socialism, the Brandmauer will not save the country from [the AfD].”
That it is imagined as a wall has now come to imply that the days of the taboo against the AfD may well be numbered. At best, its effect is temporary. That was Kretschmer’s point, of course; firewalls slow the fire down, but something else is needed to stop the actual fire. Still, this growing consensus on the limits of the Brandmauer does not answer the question of whether German politics presently needs something else in addition to the firewall, or something else instead of the firewall. Let’s try to answer that question here.
Excluding parties is somewhat undemocratic …
Opponents of the Brandmauer like to complain that excluding democratically elected parties from power is an undemocratic move. In a constitutional sense, this is of course false: there is no right to be included in a coalition. On the contrary: parties have the democratic right to follow their own judgment as to whether, how, and with whom they collaborate. If they make questionable decisions in the process, it is up to the voters to punish them. Christian Ude, former mayor of Munich for the social-democratic SPD, calls the recent history of the liberal FDP into memory. Abandoning coalition talks, its leader Christian Lindner quipped he would rather “not govern than govern badly”, and (with some delay) voters granted his wish: the FDP since lost all its seats in the federal and many state parliaments.
This line of response – the prerogative of parties to choose their own coalition partners, and the agency of the electorate – is 100% correct. Still, I would submit that there are softer meanings of ‘undemocratic’, which do extend to the absolute exclusion of a democratically elected party from cooperation or coalition formation.
First, in a multi-party democracy where generally no party wins an absolute majority, negotiation and compromise are essential: every party has the right to refuse to deal with any other, but if all of them refuse to deal with all others, democratic government is impossible. Every categorical exclusion moves the system in the direction of that point of crisis. Second, because of the necessity of establishing majorities through negotiation, representatives excluded from the relevant platforms (especially coalition formation) are less powerful than representatives included in them. This weakens their constituents and undermines the democratic principle that all citizens are represented equally.
In the Netherlands, the conservative-liberal party has successfully excluded a larger progressive party from coalition negotiations by simply refusing to talk to them. Reasons have never been clearly stated, and are widely understood to have been purely opportunistic. It remains true that the conservative-liberals are simply exercising their own democratic right to be irresponsible cynics. At the same time, the progressives are rightfully indignant about being excluded arbitrarily from a process essential to a sustainable democracy.
… but acceptable if it keeps the far right at bay …
From the perspective of democratic ethics, then, categorical exclusion of a duly elected party requires reasons to outweigh the (softly) undemocratic nature of the exclusion itself. The most immediate such reason would be that the party in question is itself antidemocratic. This is indeed the usual argument against the AfD.
However, can this kind of argument be entrusted to parties that are locked in a zero-sum struggle for seats, and that have incentives to suppress competition? Established parties can easily jump on the revolutionary rhetoric of newcomers, and draw overexcited conclusions that subtly work in their collective self-interest. In its early days, the Green party was painted by many politicians from the older parties as dangerously anti-parliamentarian. For that reason CDU politician Johannes Beermann has warned that: “only the referee can use red cards; not the players”. He recalls that after chancellor Angela Merkel decried the 2020 election of Thuringia’s prime minister with both CDU and AfD support, and called for it to be reversed, Germany’s constitutional court ruled 5-3 that she had overstepped. She should not, the court found, have used her position and resources as chancellor to intervene against a specific party.
It is good, as this ruling effectively did, to insist on a clear distinction between neutral arbiters and interested players. However, the players have some responsibilities – and corresponding rights – of their own. Whether the AfD shelters antisemites, full neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists out to overthrow the republic, and whether it does so to an extent that makes it (or parts of it) plainly illegal, is a matter for the courts. But there is also the question of whether the AfD’s policy platform itself constitutes a threat to democracy and democratic values. That is not something I would want a judge to decide, but also not a question I would want to leave unanswered.
‘Remigration’ goals that could affect millions (although admittedly the most sinister schemes don’t make it to the official state or federal platform); effectively choosing Putin’s side in his war of aggression against Ukraine; withdrawal from the Euro and the Schengen treaty – these are just a few of the more prominent AfD propositions. Whether their sum amounts to ‘no more than’ a radical political agenda – one that is immoral and disruptive, but consistent with popular sovereignty – or whether, rather, its realization would alter Germany and Europe in a way that jeopardizes the long-term survival of liberal democracy; this question is one of political judgment.
To my mind, we are dealing unequivocally with the second case: democratic government in Europe would be in grave danger were its most important country to defect from its defense and its underlying values. However, my reasons for believing that the AfD’s platform is a threat to democracy do not add up to an argument to outlaw it. What they do imply, is that I would encourage other political players to use any rule in the book against them. The AfD is owed nothing except its considerable constitutional rights. Other parties are entitled to make whatever tactical decisions keep it as far away from power as possible.
… which it doesn’t do anymore …
In short, I believe the Brandmauer is justified in principle, even if it is a softly undemocratic instrument: it is an attempt by political players themselves to structure the playing field in a way that decreases the effective power of a rival, but one that does not diminish that rival’s constitutional rights and is justified by the radical threat it poses.
Is it successful, though? The AfD has indeed been kept out of the executive branch on both the state and federal level. Though collaboration on the local level does take place, last year some researchers concluded that other parties tend to avoid it there too (although clear data are hard to come by). In short, it ‘works’ in the sense that the taboo is still in operation. However, if the goal has been to disincentivize voters to pick the AfD, then it has failed. In last year’s federal elections, the AfD doubled its vote share from 10.4% to 20.8%. Presently, its support in nation-wide polls is nearer 30%.
Meanwhile, the political costs are rising. They are mostly borne by the conservative CDU, which has had to resign itself to coalitions and policies that are too left-wing for its comfort. This undermines the credibility of the CDU as a party that can deliver to conservative, bourgeois, or right-wing interests, and drives many of them to what is now the main alternative on the right. This mechanism makes the Firewall counterproductive insofar as its incentives to voters are concerned.
Some frame the dilemma in somewhat heroic terms: “one cannot produce good politics anymore, because one has to protect the survival of democracy”, writes Reiner Haseloff (until recently prime-minister of Saxony-Anhalt for the CDU), together with journalist Robert Burdy. From the left, the calculation will look different: after all, why would the social-democratic SPD voluntarily go along with socio-economic policy choices that go against its own promises, and that would hurt it electorally? Should it act against its own interests? Should it in turn agree to what it believes is ‘bad politics’, just to make life easier for the CDU?
In my naïve moments, I think things might be slightly easier if the SPD did precisely that. However, the more dispassionate conclusion is that tensions within the coalition are themselves a symptom of the way in which the Brandmauer warps the political landscape. It is extremely hard to correct through regular political negotiations for the fact that almost a quarter of seats in Parliament are untouchable. Again, the natural state of a multi-party democracy is one of exchange, cooperation, and compromise; the presence of a large block that is ‘artificially’ excluded from these mechanisms destabilizes the whole system.
… so let’s remodel it …
In January 2025, close to the elections that would lead to his current chancellorship, opposition leader Friedrich Merz tested the reach of his own party’s ‘incompatibility resolution’ against the AfD. He tabled a motion on stricter migration measures which he said he would push “regardless of who agrees with them”. He made a point of not coordinating with the AfD, but also signaled that he was prepared to let the motion pass with their support, which would be crucial if (as he could reasonably expect) SPD and Greens would not support it. This happened as Merz had planned it, but he had not planned for what followed. Nation-wide protests burst out, his predecessor Angela Merkel weighed in, and Merz came out of the episode with a sizable scratch on his political nose. His attempt to loosen the CDU’s position regarding the AfD had failed.
I believe Merz was onto something. The formal resolutions in which the CDU has pledged not to work with the AfD already left room for his interpretation. They mostly speak of rejecting “coalitions and similar forms of collaboration” with the AfD (as well as with Die Linke, but this restriction is an internal party compromise, explained with far less vigor and policed less enthusiastically). The Thuringia crisis of 2020, which I referred to briefly above, established a stricter interpretation. The election of an FDP state minister whom the CDU supported, but for whose election AfD votes had been crucial, led to outrage within the CDU. The party quickly clarified there could be “no collaboration with the AfD – neither in a direct, nor in an indirect way”. In this version of the Brandmauer, consolidated by the 2025 events, the CDU never allows itself to rely on AfD seats for parliamentary support even if that support is unsolicited.
This form of the Brandmauer is the most undemocratic one (in the soft sense defined above). It does not serve the overriding purpose of keeping the AfD in check electorally, and is becoming so much of a political burden on the center-right that it accelerates the erosion of the democratic center as a whole. What it still does, is limit the direct power and influence of AfD representatives, and decrease the party’s chances of holding executive power. It could be argued that these benefits still outweigh the electoral harm. However, as the AfD crawls closer to absolute majorities in some states, this line of argument has weakened considerably.
Though steering away from this situation may itself be costly, I believe a less demanding version of the Brandmauer is necessary. The most modest alteration would be to accept parliamentary support from the AfD for individual policy proposals, but to reject material compromises with it.
…without forgetting why it exists.
There are risks in relaxing the prohibition, too. For one, a slippery slope is conceivable. If AfD votes become available in principle, what would stop politicians from subtly courting them? If their votes could secure a political victory at an important moment, maybe some small offer could be made in return? If ad hoc compromises are on the table, why not more encompassing deals? And how big is the step from there to power-sharing?
The Netherlands provides the cautionary tale here, by tumbling down that entire slope only recently, and dizzyingly quickly at that. The dam broke in 2023, when the conservative-liberal party got tired of having to look to its left for political deals, blew up the centrist coalition it was leading, and declared it would be open to governing with the far right PVV. A colossal strategic error, which directly increased the attractiveness of the PVV to right-wing voters, catapulted it to victory in the elections, and resulted in it leading the next (short-lived) governing coalition.
The electoral rationale of a cordon sanitaire or Brandmauer is to incentivize right-wing voters to seek representation by a non-extremist right-wing party. Germany is currently failing to provide those incentives, because the Brandmauer makes it harder for its main moderate right-wing party to succeed. However, the Dutch example illustrates how easy it is to fall from there into the opposite error, with the same outcome. In opening the door to collaboration with the far right without principled limitations, the conservative-liberals increased the perceived effectiveness of a vote for the PVV.
At present, the CDU is still avoiding the Dutch mistake: its most prominent politicians express their objections to the AfD with sufficient passion to make it believable they will not suddenly treat it as a normal partner. However, it should give pause that Merz’s controversial motion contained migration measures which AfD politicians were pleased to say looked copy-pasted from their own proposals.
Migration is the far right’s wedge into mainstream European politics. The median has shifted far in recent years, with performative border controls inside the EU now being a normal phenomenon, and with even centrist governments examining options to fly immigrants to ‘return hubs’ in Uganda or Rwanda. It is understandable that traditional parties want to deliver on what appears to be the main concern driving the rise of the radical right; but it is equally vital that on that core issue, they don’t blur the distinction between themselves and the fringe. Germany should have a serious debate on how porous the wall needs to be, but it should also keep in mind what it is there to protect.