Germany’s progressive parties bear significant responsibility for the historic surge in support for the far-right AfD in Sunday’s state elections in eastern Germany, Manon Aubry, the French co-chair of the Left Group in the European Parliament, told Euractiv on Monday (2 September).

Aubry, a twice-elected MEP and close ally of French left-wing firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon accused the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of “betraying its values [and] ambitions” since coming to power in 2021 in a coalition government with the Greens and liberals (FDP).

This, she said, paved the way for the party’s catastrophic performance in Sunday’s (1 September) state elections in Thuringia and Saxony. The 161-year-old party garnered just 6.1% and 7.3% of the vote, respectively, with the Greens and FDP faring even worse.

The AfD, meanwhile, narrowly finished second to the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) in Saxony and scored a comfortable victory in Thuringia—the first time a far-right party has won a state election since the Second World War.

“Anytime that the left is betraying its values [and] its ambitions, it is installing the far right… And this is true in Germany,” Aubry said, adding that similar examples of this phenomenon can be found in Italy, Sweden, and Finland.

By contrast, she said, the unexpected victory of the French left in July’s snap parliamentary elections shows that “any time that the left stayed strong in its values, strong in its ambitions, we defeat the far right”.

“For me, it’s interesting to have a European angle on what’s going on in every single individual country because you can [identify] a trend,” Aubry said, adding that progressive forces in Spain have also successfully stymied the rise of the far right.

“It shows that the rise of the far-right is not inevitable. You can actually face it, and you can take it down.”

BSW’s views on immigration: ‘Giving up’ to the far right?

Aubry’s comments also follow the strong performance of the new leftist outfit Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which finished third in Saxony and Thuringia despite only being formally established in January.

A former Communist who grew up in Soviet-controlled East Germany, Wagenknecht has distinguished her party from Germany’s traditional progressive forces through its staunch opposition to arming Ukraine and general hostility towards immigration.

Asked for her views on the BSW, Aubry expressed “regret” about the “division of the left” in Germany but strongly criticised Wagenknecht’s stance on immigration.

“I think on the one hand [Sahra Wagenknecht] is right to put a big emphasis on labour rights and on workers in general,” she said.

“[But] I don’t think that giving up on our values on migration is actually a way to face the far right… I think it is a way to give up to the far right.”

The Left as a source of ‘resistance’ to the far-right

Despite the recent strong performance of the French left, Aubry said that she was “very afraid” of the potential political and economic fallout from the European Parliament’s sharp shift to the right at the EU elections in June.

Echoing fellow left-wing MEPs, she noted that the main goal of the Left Group over the next five years will be to offer “resistance” to the Parliament’s coalescence of right-wing forces.

“No one could have imagined that we would have not one, not two, but three far-right groups,” she said, referring to the European Conservatives and Reformists, the Patriots for Europe, and the AfD-led Sovereigntists. “It’s unprecedented, the rise and the weight of the far right.”

Aubry urged fellow progressive groups, particularly the Greens/EFA and Socialists & Democrats—both of whom supported Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s re-election—to refrain from collaborating with right-wing forces to pass free-trade agreements, impose austerity, or build “walls at the borders of the European Union.”

“It’s clear that the right wing will more and more collaborate with the far right. So there’s a question for the Socialists and the Greens: Will you collaborate with them? For us, the answer is clear and it’s no,” she said.

Aubry—who has previously described von der Leyen’s first term as a “catastrophe“—also warned that there is a “strong possibility” that the next mandate could be even worse for progressive EU forces.

“It’s not because it’s going to be worse in the next five years that the last five years were not a catastrophe,” she said. “We’ll [most likely] find a new word, unfortunately, to describe the next five years.”