Germany goes to the polls with AFD and Scholz crises

(ANSA) - BERLIN, MAY 27 - In the EU's largest country, Germany, the European elections are marked by a far-right weakened by a series of scandals linked to its xenophobic and anti-Western tendencies and by internal frictions within German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's left-of-center coalition that are favoring the Christian Democratic opposition.
    Despite almost no economic growth, Germany still produces a quarter of the EU's GDP and will send the most (96) of its 705 MEPs to Strasbourg and Brussels. And despite the Nazi past that almost 80 years after the end of the Third Reich still impregnates German political and institutional sensibilities, a party as partly officially far-right as the Alternative for Germany (AFD) manages to gather broad support: after 11 percent achieved in the previous European elections in 2019 and in the 2021 general election, polls by major demographic institutes give it between a 23 percent detected last summer and a 15 percent last month.
    Also without a single leading candidate is the HDU, the Christian Democratic party's main opposition force: leader Friedrich Merz is launching one for each region but has the pull of the European Commission chairwoman, Germany's Ursula von der Leyen, the number one candidate of the entire European People's Party (EPP) aiming for an encore at the helm of the EU executive. The party, along with its Bavarian right-wing (CSU) electorally led by EPP group leader Manfred Weber, has been credited for weeks with 30 percent, virtually doubling the expected result for Scholz's Social Democratic party. The chancellor is fielding a former family minister, MEP Katarina Barley. The Greens, credited with 14 percent, are presenting Terry Reintke, who is little known in Germany despite being the leading co-candidate of ecologists at the European level. In contrast, the other governing party, the Liberals (FDP, 4 percent), is betting on pro-Ukrainian Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, a reference point of the Alde (Alliance of European Liberals and Democrats).
    The left-wing opposition has leading co-candidates with ties to Italy: the newly formed 'BSW' of Sarah Wagenknecht (6 percent) has German-Italian Fabio De Masi, while the Linke (4 percent) is supporting Carola Rackete, the migrant sea captain who forced the blockade on Lampedusa in 2019. (ANSA).