Agency Report –
“The exploratory talks are a red carpet for the AfD on their path to the chancellery in 2029,” Wagenknecht said in reference to the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The conservative alliance made up of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and their Bavarian sister-party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), emerged victors with 28.5% of the vote, followed by the AfD on 20.8%. The Social Democrats (SPD) of outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz came in third with 16.4%.
The CDU/CSU, led by Friedrich Merz, the likely new chancellor, and the SPD are engaged in talks to set up a coalition government, with a huge boost to military and infrastructure spending at the focus.
Wagenknecht, whose namesake Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) narrowly failed to clear the 5% threshold to enter parliament, said the CDU/CSU and the SPD had understood nothing.
Attempting to get a grip on Germany’s problems with narrowly based talks and huge rearmament debt was a “naïve illusion,” Wagenknecht said. “On the contrary, a continuation of decline and economic downturn loom,” she said.
Wagenknecht dismissed plans to push a large borrowing programme through the outgoing parliament by making use of current majorities as “electoral fraud” on the part of the CDU/CSU and the SPD.
A coalition on the basis of the these two groups would lack the necessary two-thirds majority in the new Bundestag to lift a constitutional block on incurring large debt, she noted.
The new post-election parliament will be seated on March 25. The conservative bloc and the SPD aim to get their fiscal reforms through the legislative before that date.
On Saturday, CDU/CSU and SPD negotiators presented a document outlining agreements on finance, migration and social security payments and recommended that formal coalition negotiations be started.
Although Wagenknecht has long been associated with the far-left fringe of German politics, she has taken increasingly hard-right views on issues such as immigration and gender.
