"For the EU, this would be worse than Brexit; it would mark the first step towards the disintegration of the entire EU project."
Voters know that given Germany's system of proportional representation, parties can promise whatever they want but it is the coalitions that decide. They also know that Merz will almost surely go into a coalition with a centrist party, like the Social Democrats or the Greens, neither of which support permanent border controls. If current polls are right, the CDU will have to govern with at least one of them, possibly both. The more parties, the harder the coalition talks will be, and the less of his agenda Merz will be able to implement.
There are moments in politics when politicians have to take big risks. But this was not one of them: it would have been enough for him to promise a review of immigration policies. When you make up policies on the hoof like this, people are bound to question your sincerity. After all, it was only a little over a week ago when he told a campaign rally to loud applause that "one 1933 is enough for Germany". This was a reference to the year when Hitler came to power. He was essentially comparing the AfD to the Nazis. Until Wednesday, his firewall was a firmament of German politics. Today, people are no longer sure whether it still stands.
Austria just showed us how fast a firewall can crumble. The centre-right Austrian People's Party had one in place against the far-Right Freedom Party, the winner in last year's election. Karl Nehammer, the former Austrian chancellor and leader of the People's Party, wanted to negotiate a "losers' coalition" with the Social Democrats and a small liberal party. But the negotiations failed because Nehammer, like Merz, insisted on immigration policies that were tougher than the centrists could stomach. After the talks collapsed at the beginning of this month, Nehammer resigned both as chancellor and party chairman. His party has now agreed to collapse the firewall and form a coalition with the Freedom Party. Its leader, Herbert Kickl, will become the next chancellor.
What happened in Austria is that two competing red lines clashed. If Merz ended up in a position where he would need both the SPD and the Greens to form a coalition, there is no way he could implement his immigration policies. If as in Austria, the German negotiations also ended with no deal, then the only viable coalition option would be for the CDU to form a coalition with the AfD, or a minority government with the support of the AfD.
Most probably, Merz's high-risk gamble will end up with him having to eat his words and cobble together another centrist coalition with the same old parties and same old policies that failed in the past. In this scenario, the AfD would become the main opposition party, with a strong chance of winning the 2029 elections. Weidel would stand a good chance of becoming the next chancellor. In both scenarios the AfD wins.
But this iteration of the AfD is a far cry from the party which started out 12 years ago as a conservative-libertarian group, founded by economics professors who wanted Germany to leave the euro. Today, the professors are long gone, displaced by nationalists, including some who are close to the neo-Nazi movement. Weidel herself is not in that camp. But nor is she a Javier Milei or an Elon Musk. Weidel's party, though popular with the younger generation -- and with Musk, who appeared at an AfD rally at the weekend to decry multiculturalism -- supports a return to Russian gas and heavy industry. The AfD may claim to understand new technology, but it is not a party of innovation.