2023-07-29 09:54:43
About 600 members have gathered in Magdeburg — a city in the former communist east where the party has strong support — with anti-extremist groups staging demonstrations outside.
AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla said that, a decade after its creation, the party had “come of age”.
“We are ready for more,” he told the assembled delegates.
“We are on the side of the future, we are not from yesterday — more and more people are realising that.”
Coming after recent local poll wins, the party is laying the ground for what it hopes will be further victories at European and state elections next year, as well as a national vote in 2025.
Over two consecutive weekends, the AfD members from across Germany are set to debate the party’s programme for the European vote in June.
Created as an anti-euro outfit, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) morphed into an anti-Islam, anti-immigration party and capitalised on the refugee influx under then chancellor Angela Merkel.
Buoyed by discontent with the policies of the ruling coalition, led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, as well as a weakening economy, the AfD has seen a jump in its poll ratings.
READ ALSO: ANALYSIS: Are far-right sentiments growing in eastern Germany?
It is now second at the national level, ahead of Scholz’s party and just behind the main conservative opposition bloc.
Ahead of the start of the gathering, Alice Weidel, the AfD’s other leader, made clear the party’s ambitions, saying they planned to field a chancellor candidate at the 2025 elections for the first time.
It already has 78 MPs in parliament, out of 736, making it the second-biggest group in the Bundestag.
But their growth in popularity has unsettled the political establishment as well as large sections of the public, and dozens of demonstrators protested outside the conference centre in Magdeburg.
“I’m afraid of what might happen if the AfD comes to power at some point,” said Steven Braun, 18, who had travelled from the northern city of Bremen to join the protest.
Success in the east
In recent times, the party has succeeded in attracting a broad range of discontented voters, said Matthias Jung, from polling institute Forschungsgruppe Wahlen.
“They range from the young man armed with a baseball bat, who has a narrow worldview, to those on the extreme right, to someone with little interest in politics, annoyed by the government’s current policies and who does not view the conservative opposition as a credible alternative.”
The AfD has been particularly successful in the east of the country, where many feel they lost out from national reunification in 1990.
READ ALSO: Why the far-right AfD’s victory in an east German district is so significant
In areas that were once part of the communist German Democratic Republic, the AfD succeeded in recent weeks in getting its first full-time mayor elected as well as its first district administrator.
And it is in the east, where the AfD is already garnering about 30-percent support in opinion polls, that the party is hoping for fresh victories next year.
Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg states will hold votes for their regional parliaments in September 2024, and there is a chance that in at least one of the three legislatures the AfD will win the most seats.
An AfD election poster with the slogan “The East stands up!” hangs on a main road in the district of Sonneberg, Thuringia. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Martin Schutt
The party could become the “strongest force” in the three states, Chrupalla predicted, adding: “We can take on responsibility to govern.”
By contrast in the western states of Bavaria and Hesse, where regional elections will take place this October, the AfD has some support but is stagnating in the polls.
Scholz has sought to downplay the AfD’s recent surge in popularity, saying he didn’t expect the party to make any significant gains at the next general election.
But the opposition Christian Democratic Union, the party of ex-chancellor Merkel, is struggling to come up with an effective strategy as the AfD increasingly draws away their voters.
Leader Friedrich Merz caused a firestorm last weekend when he said his party could be open to working with the AfD at the local level, prompting him to swiftly walk the comments back.
READ ALSO: German opposition backpedals on willingness to work with far-right
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