Germany's 'political firewall' against far-right AfD faces mounting pressure

Germany's centrist parties have long maintained a strict rule: do not cooperate with the Alternative for Germany, the far-right party whose regional branches have been classified as extremist by the country's domestic intelligence agency. They call this boundary a "political firewall"—a metaphor borrowed from construction, where such barriers prevent fire from spreading between buildings. In politics, the firewall is meant to protect democracy itself. But the wall is cracking, and the pressure to breach it is mounting from multiple directions at once.

The firewall took formal shape in 2018, when the Christian Democratic Union adopted a resolution rejecting "coalitions and similar forms of cooperation" with both the AfD and the socialist Left Party. When Friedrich Merz became CDU leader in December 2021, he made the commitment personal, telling Der Spiegel: "Under my leadership, there will be a firewall against the AfD." For years, CDU politicians declined even to accept positions won with AfD votes. It was a line drawn in institutional ink.

Then came January 2025. Merz, now chancellor and leading the parliamentary opposition at the time, allowed a CDU motion on asylum policy to pass with AfD support. The move triggered immediate accusations that he had breached the very firewall he had championed. Now in office, Merz has grown visibly irritated by questions about the policy, tending to avoid the term altogether. The Social Democrats and Greens continue to reject AfD cooperation formally, though without the CDU's written resolution. But Sahra Wagenknecht, founder of the left-wing populist Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht, has taken a different path entirely—she explicitly opposes excluding the AfD and would even accept an AfD-led government in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, where elections are scheduled for September 6.

At the local level, the firewall has always been porous. City councils and municipal governments across Germany have repeatedly seen politicians from mainstream parties vote alongside the AfD on routine matters—building permits, infrastructure projects, budgets. Supporters of this pragmatism argue that a daycare center does not become a bad idea simply because the AfD supports it. Critics warn of something more sinister: a gradual normalization that makes the far-right party socially acceptable, a process that could eventually spread from local politics upward to state and federal levels.

The real pressure, though, comes from the east. In much of eastern Germany, AfD support has climbed toward 40 percent—a figure so large that other parties can no longer form governing majorities without either including the AfD or joining forces across ideological chasms so wide they strain credibility. Saxony's CDU Premier Michael Kretschmer recently told the business daily Handelsblatt: "Anyone still talking about firewalls has failed to recognize the signs of the times. We need to talk to everyone who is willing to talk." A CDU interest group in Brandenburg submitted a motion calling for the party to revise or repeal its incompatibility resolution, though it withdrew the motion after criticism from federal leadership.

Wagenknecht has framed the firewall as fundamentally undemocratic. "It is simply completely undemocratic to permanently exclude a party supported by around 40% of voters," she said of Saxony-Anhalt. "The firewall has failed." Political scientists have raised similar concerns about a democratic deficit—the long-term exclusion of a party with substantial voter support creates its own legitimacy problems.

The federal CDU leadership is trying to hold the line. Thorsten Frei, chair of the Bundestag's conservative parliamentary group, has made clear he will not tolerate deviations by state branches. "The ban on cooperation with the AfD is a fundamental party resolution of the CDU. It cannot be interpreted differently from one federal state to another," he told the Funke Media Group. Merz himself, despite the pressure and the January breach, continues to uphold the incompatibility resolution with both the AfD and the Left Party.

But the question that haunts German politics now is whether this holding pattern can last. As eastern states face elections and governing crises, as AfD support continues to climb, and as the term "firewall" itself becomes a source of irritation to the chancellor who once championed it, the answer remains unclear. How majorities opposed to the AfD can be formed in the future—and whether they can be formed at all—is the problem German democracy must now solve.