When German historian Andreas Rödder first suggested that his centre-right party review its policy of exclusion of the far right a little over two years ago, the idea was so taboo that it cost him his influential policy role with Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz.
Today, with the far-right Alternative for Germany polling above 25 per cent nationally, neck and neck with the CDU ahead of regional elections this year, Rödder no longer feels quite so isolated.
While he remains a minority voice, the upcoming votes are reigniting a debate on the possibility of dropping the party’s “firewall” that excludes working with the AfD.
Elections in two former communist states — where the AfD is likely to win, but remain short of a majority — are cause for particular concern. Such an outcome would put Merz in a bind because forming a majority coalition without the far-right party could mean teaming with the far-left Die Linke party, which the CDU has also explicitly ruled out.
“Demonising helps the AfD, I have the empirical argument on my side,” Rödder said. “I have no guarantee what I’m proposing would work. I just know that what the CDU is doing doesn’t.”
Rödder, who was chair of the influential values commission under Merz when the CDU was in opposition, had proposed in 2023 that the CDU debate whether it might rely on AfD in some regional parliamentary votes. He has continued to attack the long-standing firewall, known as the Brandmauer, since the CDU came into government in May.
In October, another senior party figure, former CDU secretary-general Peter Tauber, expressed doubt over the logic of the firewall in an interview in Stern magazine.
Merz has said the far-right party wants to eradicate and replace the CDU. He ruled out coalition talks or relying on its votes, casting his government as the last chance to show German voters that mainstream parties can deliver. Any move to co-operate would also rip apart his governing coalition with the Social Democrats [SPD].
The argument inside the CDU mirrors debates across Europe, where far-right movements that were once on the fringes of politics are challenging the firewalls and “cordons sanitaires” built by the established parties to exclude them from power. In Germany, however, the issue is uniquely fraught, shaped by the trauma of Nazism and a postwar commitment never again to allow rightwing extremism access to power.
The CDU banned co-operation with the AfD and Die Linke in a resolution in 2018. Founded five years earlier, the AfD had emerged and gained in strength in reaction to policies enacted under former CDU chancellor Angela Merkel, including the Greek bailout and her decision to admit nearly 1mn refugees in 2015.
Many CDU officials are still warning against easing the firewall. Herbert Reul, Nord-Rhine-Westphalia’s interior minister, said in December that the AfD was “one of the greatest dangers to our democracy”, and that he would quit the party if it softened its stance.
Dennis Radtke, another top CDU official, echoed the threat: “This would also be a red line for me, as for a lot of other people.”
A senior CDU figure who served in one of Merkel’s cabinets cautioned that Rödder’s relentless attacks on the firewall risked turning its collapse into “a self-fulfilling prophecy”.
Conservative voters are divided. A Forsa poll conducted before 2024 regional elections in the east showed that 45 per cent of CDU members thought it made sense to work with the AfD “on a case-by-case basis”, while the rest ruled out any form of collaboration.
Party insiders worry that poor results in regional elections could erode discipline, particularly at local level, as fragmented parliaments become increasingly hard to govern.
Merz’s resolve will be tested in elections this year in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the AfD — boosted by popular dissatisfaction at migration policy and the failure of Europe’s largest economy to rebound from years of stagnation — is forecast to approach 40 per cent of the vote.
Merz’s CDU may face a dilemma in September if Saxony-Anhalt produces a hung parliament, with polls suggesting it may need support from parties including Die Linke to block the AfD from power. If the AfD secures an outright majority, it would control its first regional parliament and get a seat in the Bundesrat, the chamber that represents state governments and must approve legislation passed by the Bundestag.
Debate is also spreading in business circles, with some corporate leaders arguing that engagement with AfD MPs is unavoidable.
In October, an association representing the Mittelstand — small and medium-sized companies — caused uproar by inviting AfD figures to a parliamentary evening in Berlin. The group’s chair, Marie-Christine Ostermann, sits on the advisory board of Rödder’s conservative think-tank, R21.
Branding the AfD as racists and excluding it from public discourse has failed to halt its rise, according to political scientist Werner Patzelt.
“Voters feel that the CDU cannot deliver centre-right policies because it is constantly forced into coalitions with the Social Democrats or the Greens,” Patzelt said.
Rödder was born in a rural Catholic part of western Germany. The 58-year-old Mainz university professor of modern European history describes his values “as conservative liberal”, which he says got lost during Merkel’s CDU/SPD grand coalition years.
He dismissed the classification of the AfD as an extremist party by the intelligence services, saying that the constitutional court is ultimately the sole judge of this.
Hopes for a ‘‘Christian Democratic reorientation’’ under Merz have been frustrated by the compromises the chancellor has been forced to make with the SPD, Rödder argued.
Critics accuse Rödder of seeking to build bridges to the AfD through ultra-conservative media outlets such as Nius, set up by a former Bild editor.
He rejected that. “What I’m doing is thinking through how to deal with the AfD in a polarised society,” he said.
He said he was worried about “the 20 per cent of the electorate who feel excluded not only from decision-making but also from expressing an opinion”.
His proposal centres on defining a catalogue of constitutional and political “red lines”, outside of which the CDU would accept relying on AfD backing. “I am not in favour of coalition or co-operation,” he insisted.
Critics of Rödder note that Merz has already tested this idea before he was elected as chancellor — with poor results. After an Afghan migrant fatally stabbed a toddler during the campaign, he submitted a nonbinding parliamentary motion on asylum laws, which passed only with AfD support — the first such majority since the war.
The move failed to lift the CDU in national elections a month afterwards but energised Die Linke, while the AfD secured a record 21 per cent of the vote.
Rödder’s red lines strategy was perilous, said Uwe Jun, a political scientist at Trier University. “Those who want to erase these boundaries will always be on the offensive. Those who draw them will have to defend them — constantly.”