MAGDEBURG/BUCHAREST/MANCHESTER/GRAZ (our own report) – For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, a far-right party has secured over 40 per cent of the vote in a state election. In yesterday’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) came first by a wide margin, with 43.8 per cent of the vote. In terms of seats in the Landtag, they have only narrowly missed the majority required to form a single-party government. With 39 out of a total of 83 parliamentary seats, the AfD has fallen just three seats short of an absolute majority. The right-wing surge reflects a trend that can also be observed across Europe: populations in deindustrialised, impoverished and structurally marginalised regions see no prospects for themselves and are turning against the ruling elites. But where there is no strong left-wing alternative commanding credibility amongst the disadvantaged communities, these voters will shift to the right. A clear example is Romania, where the far right dominates the poorer regions beyond the capital Bucharest. In the UK, too, there are plenty of run-down working-class neighbourhoods where people have moved sharply to the far right. Saxony-Anhalt is now following suit. An example of what bucks the trend can be found in Graz, Austria’s second-largest city, with its communist mayor. Read more

LONDON german-foreign-policy.com spoke with Vladimir Borțun about the rapid rise of the Romanian far right and what it has to do with the dominant position of foreign companies, including German ones, in Romania. Borțun is a political scientist and teaches at St John's College, Oxford University. He points out that the steady advance of foreign companies in Romania is not reducing poverty in the country, but is now putting pressure on growing sections of the local petty bourgeoisie. This class supports the far-right party AUR (Alianța pentru Unirea Românilor, Alliance for the Union of Romanians), whose president George Simion came very close to winning the recent presidential election with 46.4 per cent of the vote. In polls, AUR is currently in first place with almost 40 per cent, well ahead of the social democrats of PSD, which is in second place with 20 per cent. In the European Parliament, the AUR belongs to the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) – alongside the Fratelli d'Italia (FdI) of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the Polish PiS party, whose candidate Karol Nawrocki has been President of Poland since 6 August. Read more

BUCHAREST/BRUSSELS (own report) – Romania is seeing a growing protest against dubious interventions in the country’s presidential election. The political establishment, supported by Brussels and Berlin, is accused of blatant manipulation. Manipulation began last November in response to the unexpected first-round victory of a presidential candidate regarded as pro-Russian. After strong disapproval signalled by EU leaders and an openly critical intervention by the then US administration under President Joe Biden, Romania’s Constitutional Court declared the election null and void. Now, the NATO-sceptical candidate, an independent politician from the far right, has been barred from standing in the presidential re-run in May. He won the first round at the end of November partly on a peace and anti-corruption ticket, gaining the support of many Romanians who considered corruption to be rife across the Romanian political establishment. The public was already highly critical of their annulment, but the stratagem to exclude a popular candidate is now driving more voters to the extreme right. Such machinations were also evident in neighbouring Moldova at the end of 2024. Pro-Western political forces in one of the poorest countries in Europe won the presidential election by a whisker, thanks to irregularities in voting arrangements for the many Moldovans living abroad: 231 polling stations were set up in Western countries, compared to only two in the whole of Russia. Read more