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BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s far-right anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) is gaining support in polls, raising alarm among major parties. He is on track to win elections in three eastern German states by calling for a block on immigration and criticizing green policies as costly.

National polls show the AfD’s approval ratings at 17% to 19%, near all-time highs, and in some polls it is in a race for second place with Chancellor Scholz’s Social Democrats. He was fifth in the 2021 election when he secured 10.3% of the vote.

This is the first time the AfD has recorded such a high approval rating since 2018, after the European migrant crisis broke out. This time, the AfD, which advocates nationalism and anti-immigration, seems to have taken advantage of the infighting within the three-party coalition government led by Chancellor Scholz.

Far-right parties are gaining ground in Europe. In France, he has become a stronger electoral opponent, and in Italy and Sweden he has joined the government as a ruling coalition.

But for Germany, with its Nazi past, the rise of the AfD is particularly sensitive. The party has sharply criticized the government for its high immigration, high inflation and costly “green transition” policies.

Germany’s intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has labeled the AfD’s youth wing “extremist” and accused it of promoting “racist social notions”. The agency’s chief also accused the AfD, which opposes sanctions against Russia, of helping spread Russian propaganda about the situation in Ukraine.

Germany’s main political parties have refused to cooperate with the AfD, keeping it out of power, but critics of the AfD fear it will push mainstream German politics further to the right.

“The tone around issues such as immigration has become edgy,” said Stefan Marshall, a political scientist at the University of Düsseldorf.

The issue of immigration is gaining weight on the German political agenda. Michael Kretschmer, premier of the eastern state of Saxony, from the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said last week that the number of migrants was “too high” and called for limits on asylum intake and cuts on benefits. .

CDU leader Friedrich Merz, who has refused to draw any comparisons to the AfD, said in a statement Thursday that the CDU’s claims “have absolutely no resemblance” to those of the AfD.

Fazer, meanwhile, has accused the AfD of being partly responsible for fomenting anti-migrant sentiment and fomenting violence against refugees. The AfD denies this.

The AfD has also challenged attributing human activity to climate change and has tapped into the concerns of some voters about the costs of moving away from fossil fuels.

AfD co-leader Tino Kurpala said the policies of the Greens, a coalition partner of Scholz’s government, calling for a faster transition away from fossil fuels, would lead to “economic warfare, inflation and deindustrialization”. The number of eligible voters is increasing.

“We are the only party that will not form a coalition with a dangerous party like the Greens,” Kurpala said.

In the eastern German states of Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, where parliamentary elections are held in 2024, the AfD is on the verge of becoming the top party for the first time, with 23-28% support in opinion polls.

Analysts say there is room for the AfD in the former East German region, where voter support is less solidified. Thirty years after reunification, low-income conditions in the former East German region continue, and voters believe that the main parties that have repeatedly changed governments over the years are to blame.

Despite being excluded from the coalition government, the AfD’s rise is stealing votes from other parties and should make the coalition more unstable at both the state and national levels. This is especially true in the former East German region, where the AfD has the most support.

Marc Debs, a political scientist at the University of Mannheim, said that among some voters, conservative parties in particular would prefer more, if not a formal coalition, with the AfD rather than aligning with the left. It is possible that there will be more voices calling for stronger cooperation.

Some of the AfD’s arguments are supported by voters who support major parties at the local political level. In the small town of Bautzen in the state of Saxony, CDU lawmakers last December voted in favor of an AfD proposal to cut German language courses and other assistance for rejected asylum seekers.

“The dogmatism of central politics, which equates all the AfD with the Nazis and eliminates them, is wrong,” said Matthias Grahl, head of the CDU Bautzen district committee.

Others say the AfD is just piggybacking on growing dissatisfaction with the confluence of crises. Inflation has already peaked, and energy prices, which spiked in the winter following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have calmed down.

Scholz’s government spokesman Wolfgang Buchner said he was confident the government would be able to erode support for the AfD.

“Prime Minister Scholz is optimistic that it won’t be long before we don’t have to worry about this if we do a good job solving Germany’s problems,” the spokesman said. .

(Translation: Eacleren)