 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We are going to discuss the German elections and what is seen to be a perceptible shift to the right because the AFD has gained ground while Merkel might have retained the pre-evaluant position of the parliament. Nevertheless, there have been significant gains made by the right. Left seems to have more or less stood their ground and one party which had earlier lost representation has come back in the party. Now, how do you characterize it? Do you characterize it as left liberal? Do you characterize it as a combination of liberal and liberal? We do not know. How do you see the German elections? A mixed bag? Very mixed bag. Although, it reflects a general trend seen throughout Europe of a resurgent or if you like emergent right. That is not to the extent that one saw in the Brexit vote or even in France in terms of voting percentage. But as we have seen from Holland, the Dutch elections and now in Germany, you have got additional electoral support for the far right, but it has been kept in check. I think that is the significant thing. Whereas, I think a year and a half, two years ago, the trend appeared to be that the right was on a resurgent track throughout Europe and threatening to reach positions where they could capture power. But this is again a partial reading of the European scenario. If you remember, Syriza had made significant gains in Europe before they were sort of shut out by the banks. Podemos in Spain had gained a lot of ground. You still see in Spain a lot of the groups which have now won local elections who are relatively to the left of even Podemos. And therefore, we really cannot talk about only resurgent right. Even in France, this is the first time the left in the presidential elections gave a very close third. In fact, just a couple of percentage points really was a difference between Le Pen and Melanchion. So this whole argument that there has been a resurgent right is really very mixed. It is not so clear as it might appear. It is mixed also in the sense that while it looked as if a year and a half, two years ago that this trend was sharpening, I think the German elections and earlier the Dutch elections have shown that if the right also is pushing, they can be pushed back. I think that is what is visible here. I would say that what would seem to really characterize European politics and this is really across the board in Europe that the traditional politics of lot of the center right or center left parties and defining them as the mainstream media does, those are the ones which are actually losing ground on both sides. And in fact, what would be seen is that the Merkel's party, the CDP had a significant right wing support which after her one million refugees being taken in, migrants being taken in, that section seems to have split from the CDP and gone to AFD. I agree with you that the general trend certainly visible in Europe and we can argue in the United States as well has been that of a decline in some places, even collapse of the center, whether it is center right, center left and in different contexts, these mean different things. But it is the center which has given ground and this is fairly visible in Germany as well with Angela Merkel's party having dropped about 8 percent that is the CDU plus CSU coalition having dropped about 8 percent and the social democrats also having dropped a similar number. They are both at the lowest electoral support they have had in many years and the social democrats in fact the lowest since the post war years. What is visible in Germany is that Angela Merkel's CDU has actually moved from the center right closer to the social democrat position which is why today the leadership of the social democrats say we no longer want to be in this coalition because in many ways Merkel has shifted and eaten up their agenda. In fact, if you compare Germany with the rest of Europe, although her party is characterized as the center right if not the right earlier, the positions her party has taken are more or less what the center left takes in the rest of Europe. But it is also interesting Germany takes a very different position with respect to any other EU country which is dependent on the European Union financial institution. So when it came to Greece, Spain, Italy, all these countries there was a relative hardening of your the position that Germany had particularly respect to financial institutions and that was really a part of the crisis of Greece that they could not get any respite from extremely onerous burdens which the EU financial institutions put on them and the Germany was really pushing it very hard. The freedom party now the FDP is strong showing in these elections and it looks as if Merkel is going to have to put together this very problematic coalition including the Greens and the FDP. What in Germany today is being called the Jamaica coalition because of the black, green and yellow colors of these three parties. The colors of the Jamaican flag. And this is going to be a very difficult coalition to put because the FDP is a Thatcherite pro-market party and they have already made fairly clear that they are going to oppose the Greens energy policy. They are going to oppose the European moderation taking place which was earlier being done through a diarchy between Merkel and Macron in France and the FDP wants to move it further to the right and to free market economics. So, it is going to be a tough ask. So, that is one dynamic that is going to have an impact not only inside Germany but also on European politics now. Whereas, earlier everybody else in the European Union was comfortable in knowing that Angela Merkel is the leader in Germany and disputed we know where her policies are strongly pro Europe etc. But now this is going to shake up and have an impact on European politics and the economy as well as inside Germany as well. The second thing I think that we need to watch out for down the road is even though the social democrats say that we have decided to stay out of the ruling coalition primarily in order to deny primacy in the occupation space to the right to the AFD. The fact remains I think that the AFD is going to be an extremely vocal opposition in parliament. They have got almost 90 seats in parliament not too far behind the social democrats in terms of their presence in the house and they are going to be an extremely vocal. So, what is going to be interesting to watch is how much of the opposition to whatever coalition comes led by Merkel, how much of that opposition is going to come from the right and how much from the left and which gains ascendancy and by the left I am talking about the social democrat. Now, coming to the other issue the Greens and the left the D-Linke have more or less held their positions and might have gained slightly here and there. Interestingly enough I think what the voting figures seem to show that the left has lost some support in the erstwhile is Germany, meaning the D-Linke. Well they have gained quite a bit significant amount of support in what used to be erstwhile West Germany and therefore if you take what has been eating into the votes of the erstwhile West Germany both the CDU and the social democrats seem to have lost to AFD as well as to D-Linke some of the votes which could also seem to indicate the dissatisfaction of the people with neoliberal economics which has really meant that they have the German working class had had a huge squeeze on its wages, wages have not risen for a very long time. That is true in fact I was looking at some of the electoral figures that have come out of Germany. The AFD there has been an attempt through opinion polls to interpret where the AFD has gained their votes from and they seem to have all in all gained about four and a half million votes in this election compared to the previous one. That is a lot and figures seem to suggest that they have gained about 1.5 million from those who have not voted in the last election. So, they are new voters. They have gained roughly an equivalent amount from the CDU CSU combination and in fact it looks as if they have gained more from the CSU. This is something which has escaped most commentators that the CSU has been the one that has suffered the bigger loss. It is also inexplicable the CSU is the more conservative right in section of the coalition. So, the right in the Bavaria in other parts they have lost their vote to the AFD and the CSU has now been making noises saying that the CDU should now move further to the right in order to try and get back the votes that they have lost to the AFD. The amount of votes that the AFD has gained from either the greens or from D linker are actually very small. They are in the 100,000 odd range which can happen in any election when one party there is a momentum in its favor it can gain. But the other point that you made is I think very interesting which is the east-west. The AFD has gained a lot in the east which shows the continued disenchantment in the east with unification what it has brought the east or what it has not brought the east. The loss of work in the east whereas most of the work and jobs have been created in the west. So, the disaffection in the east the disenchantment with unification has reflected in a protest vote which has unfortunately gone to the right. Similar to what people said about the Brexit vote, the Trump vote, but there were not so much votes for as votes against. Thank you, Nagu, for being with us and discussing what could be an important election for Germany and also the European Union. So, let's see how it develops, what things happened in Europe further, some check, some advances for the right but we need to see overall terms where we are going to go from here. This is all the time we have for NewsClick today. 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