Germany: Anti-Euro Party ‘Alternative For Germany’ Makes Significant Headway Into Parliamentary Elections

– Anti-Euro Party in Germany Makes Significant Headway into Parliamentary Elections (Liberty Blitzkrieg, Sep 12, 2013):

I haven’t been paying all that much attention to Germany as of late considering the incredible amount of scandals that have been emanating from the Obama administration, in addition to its ridiculous and dangerous attempts to catalyze World War III. However, with parliamentary elections set for September 22, it appears there are some interesting things afoot.

In case you haven’t heard of it, a new party was formed in Germany on February 6, 2013. The party is known as the AfD, or the “Alternative for Germany.” It is strongly anti-Euro and has gained surprising strength in the polls despite its very brief history.

On a related note, reading this article made me think of a comment made by Angela Merkel the other day when she said:

This is my approach and you can say that I’m doing all these things because I’m really a European at heart.

I found this odd, because while I do not live on the continent, I have spent some time there and in all my travels I never once met a European. I’m wondering, does this species actually exist outside of the catering halls of Brussels? Where do they live?

Now for more on the Afd from Business Week:

German parliamentary elections are coming up on Sept. 22, and Chancellor Angela Merkel has a problem on her hands. A euro-skeptical political party known as AfD is rising in the polls and could deny her Christian Democratic Union and its coalition partners the majority they need to continue governing.

AfD, or Alternative for Germany, currently holds no seats in the Bundestag, and until recently it barely registered in public-opinion polls. But a survey released on Sept. 4 by the Forsa polling group showed it with 4 per cent support—just shy of the 5 per cent needed to win Bundestag representation. Peter Matuschek, Forsa’s chief political analyst, says the poll may have underestimated the party’s strength. Many supporters, he told Spiegel, “are too embarrassed to admit that they are planning to vote for the AfD,” which wants Greece, Spain, and other crisis-hit countries to leave the euro zone, and possibly break up the existing monetary union itself.

At first blush, Merkel seems to be in little danger. Support for her CDU and its coalition partners is currently running at about 45 per cent in the polls, well ahead of the roughly 36 per cent for the opposition SPD and its Green Party allies. Merkel’s big problem is that nearly all AfD supporters are defectors from her camp. If AfD tops 5 per cent in the Sept. 22 vote, she will have to bring the opposition SPD party into the governing coalition, as was the case from 2005 to 2009, predicts Roland Freudenstein, deputy director at the Centre for European Studies, a center-right think tank in Brussels. “The likelihood is that she remains chancellor, albeit maybe in a different coalition,” Freudenstein says.

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Full article here.

In Liberty,
Mike