In an exclusive interview with DW, Thuringia's State Premier Mario Voigt told DW Chief Political Editor Michaela Küfner how he has handled the popularity of the far-right AfD in his state, and says the CDU wants to "take issues away from the far right."
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00:00With me is Mario Voigt, the State Premier of Thuringia.
00:04Mr. Voigt, you have experience of forming a coalition against the far-right alternative for Germany.
00:09It became the strongest force in regional elections,
00:12and you then had to form a rather complicated three-way coalition
00:16to prevent the AfD from actually being in power in Thuringia.
00:22How is that working out?
00:24Right now, it's working fine. We are right in the start of it,
00:27and we are all aligned with our goals.
00:29We have a reform-driven process,
00:32which basically takes the main issues of the voters as the driving factors,
00:38like education, like reforming the economical process in Thuringia,
00:42reducing red tape when it comes to bureaucracy.
00:46But now we have budget discussions coming up,
00:48and so we're going to see how this works out.
00:51But I'm rather optimistic that it's playing fine.
00:53But still, a three-party coalition is always more communication, more dialogue,
00:58and sometimes difficult.
01:00And that's why I'm working hard on the federal level,
01:03that we can form a much easier coalition.
01:06Here in Germany, we've seen a huge debate about the so-called firewall.
01:10That is the commitment by all parties of the center not to work with the far-right AfD party.
01:17Your party, Dieter Friedrich Merz,
01:19accepted votes by the AfD for the very first time in German history
01:23to reach a majority in the German parliament.
01:27How is that impacting on how that firewall is being seen by your own people,
01:32who want to have a more open conversation with the AfD?
01:36What the CDU wants is to take issues away from the far-right.
01:41And what you're going to see all around Europe is,
01:44if the center-right and the centrist parties are not solving the issues of the voters,
01:51they will tend to vote rather extreme.
01:54You're going to find this in France, you're going to find this in the Netherlands,
01:57and in different places else.
01:59And therefore, what we do as a CDU is try to position ourselves right in the middle of it,
02:05and inviting also social democrats and others to come along
02:10and solve the issues from the center,
02:13and not relying on people from the extreme left or from the extreme right.
02:18And unfortunately, they didn't play along,
02:21and this was, in my opinion, a big strategic mistake of the social democrats and the Greens in the first place.
02:27But therefore, we're going to have the election on the 23rd of February
02:31in order to form a coalition who can solve these issues.
02:34The AfD in Thuringia is led by Björn Höcke.
02:38He can legally be called a fascist.
02:41Parts of the party are being looked at very closely by German intelligence services.
02:45They're suspected of undermining democracy here in Germany.
02:49How acute is the danger when you look ahead to these elections
02:53that are less than two weeks away here in Germany?
02:56I think the AfD is really a threat to democracy in Germany,
03:00and with Björn Höcke they have the most extremist leader in my home state.
03:05And there is a basic struggle going on between the Christian democrats,
03:09as a more centrist center right-wing party,
03:12and on the other hand, the far extreme right with the AfD.
03:16And what we try to do is, we try to invite all the other parties to solve the issues
03:21which are high on the radar of the people,
03:23which is migration, which is the economic situation of Germany,
03:26and which is also the competitiveness of our country.
03:31And if we are able to solve these issues,
03:34then I'm pretty certain that we will reduce the vote share of the AfD,
03:38and this is what we are looking for.
03:41Well, how optimistic are you that it will be possible to find common ground on migration
03:46after we saw that spectacular failure to actually do exactly that
03:49in German parliament ahead of the elections?
03:52Those very parties that were calling each other liars
03:55will potentially have to form a government again after election day.
04:00I'm pretty optimistic that this will be possible after the election,
04:04but it also depends on the vote share for the Christian democrats.
04:07That's why we are working hard in the next two weeks to increase our vote share,
04:13and then we will invite other parties to come along.
04:17And what I'm pretty optimistic, or makes me optimistic,
04:21is that the social democrats with their prime ministers in the states
04:26have already agreed on the policy initiatives the CDU have proposed,
04:32and therefore I believe that we have a good chance to tackle these issues
04:36right after the federal elections.
04:38And we have to in order to make this pretty dominant issue in German politics to be solved.
04:47Now, one argument I've heard from your conservative CDU-CSU camp is that,
04:51look, the AFD polling at 20% and your state has got more than 30%.
04:56Nobody is willing to go into a coalition with them,
04:59and that means people who are leaning right, potentially far right,
05:03effectively out of having their say in German politics,
05:07because they have no chance of forming a government.
05:10But the flip side is how successful has the AFD been in driving the agenda,
05:15for instance on migration, after all it was celebrating in German parliament
05:19when the conservative CDU agreed to team up with them and voted with them.
05:23Quite frankly, I believe that they are not driving the agenda.
05:27The agenda is driven by what are the problems of the real voters out there,
05:32and the people, how they perceive it.
05:34In the last three years, there almost have been 2 million refugees coming to Germany,
05:41and this is an issue every local municipality is experiencing,
05:45and they sometimes have the impression that this is not high on the radar of the parties on the federal level.
05:51And what the CDU is trying to achieve is basically to say,
05:56well, we see you with your issues out there,
05:59and what we are experiencing right now in the German society is,
06:03there are rather more, let's say, the somewhere voters who live more in rural areas,
06:10who have middle education, who are very closely tied to their social communities,
06:15socially more conservative people, and they feel neglected,
06:19they feel overseen from the people, the anywheres,
06:23who can live in Berlin, in Munich, in Paris or London,
06:27and they are highly educated, they have leadership positions in the society,
06:32and they try to impose their lifestyle and their worldview on these somewhere voters,
06:37and they are sending a stop sign.
06:39And what we as CDU try to achieve is basically bridging the gap between these two voting blocs,
06:45and if we are able to do so, to be more inclusive,
06:49then we also will reduce the extremism in the society.
06:53So what you're describing there, that has a lot of parallels with what we're seeing in the United States.
06:58Donald Trump won because also there is a discrepancy
07:04between the big centers and rural communities.
07:07JD Vance, the now Vice President, even wrote a book about it.
07:10How far away is Germany from such a scenario?
07:13Many are already seeing 2029 as the key election that could determine which way Germany will go.
07:21I think this is a very crucial question.
07:23I mean, first of all, we are a parliamentary system,
07:26so I believe German society is more consensual and we are more stable in a way.
07:31We are not like driving and pushing so much around like the presidential politics in the U.S. has done,
07:39and we are not so divided.
07:41But I think taking the bigger picture and seeing that 2029 is a crucial year,
07:47not just for federal election, also for the election in Eastern Germany,
07:50where Saxony and Thuringia will also have election,
07:53and this all taken together will decide if Germany in the next four years is able to solve the issues,
08:00reducing the disconnect, reducing the anger in the society, pushing the anger points away,
08:07or we are not able to solve that because we are moving too slow,
08:11we are not reform driven enough, and then probably 2029 will be the water sheet of it.
08:18And so from that all together, I believe it's crucial that everyone is understanding
08:23that it's not the nitty gritty little things which have to change,
08:27the whole direction of the country has to change.
08:29And if we are able to deliver that, I'm certain that the AFD will be shrinking,
08:34and this is what we are aiming for.
08:36Mario Fuchs, State Premier of Thuringia, thank you very much.
08:39Thank you very much for the talk.