Ahead of the elections AfD reiterates its proposal to leave the EU and the Eurozone. This is foreseen in a draft of the pre-election program that has already been sent to the party members. It will be put to a vote at the January congress, while elections for the Federal Parliament take place on February 23.

In this text, the xenophobic party repeats what it had “promised” before the last European elections: “We consider it necessary for the Germany from the European Union and to establish a new European Community”. It will be a “Europe of Independent Homelands” with a single market, but also “common interests”. In addition, the AfD wants to leave the common European currency, but admits that a unilateral decision would be difficult, so it seeks a “renegotiation” between Germany and the rest of the Eurozone member states.

For “Dexit”, i.e. leaving the EU in the standards of “Brexit”, the AfD predicts a referendum in Germany. However, leaving would not be an easy task, as membership in the EU is enshrined in the German Constitution. Consequently, a two-thirds majority in the German Parliament would be needed for the necessary amendment to the Constitution.

“No” from the business world

As recently as last February, AfD co-chairs Tino Krupala and Alice Weidel seemed to be coming to terms with the idea of ​​joining the EU. Krupala said it was “too late” for Germany to leave the EU, while Weidel told the Financial Times that Dexit was nothing more than a “plan B”.

Germany’s largest economic institutes and the main representatives of the business world condemn the AfD’s plans. The Institute of German Economics (IW) in Cologne, in a recent study concluded that an exit from the EU would cost the German economy 690 billion euros within five years, while the country’s Gross National Product would decrease by 5.6% and 2.5 million jobs would be lost. “The consequences would be as painful as those of the coronavirus pandemic and the energy crisis combined,” reports IW.

For the German Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (BVMW), the AfD’s plans amount to “a kamikaze mission”. Already before the European elections in June, the association warned that “the monetary union is a useful complement to the single market and makes it significantly easier for companies to make products and services available abroad”.

Speaking to Deutsche Welle, the representative of the AfD, Ronald Glaser, admits that today Germany benefits from the EU, but argues that “we would have the same benefit if we proceeded with other agreements”. As for economists’ predictions of economic disaster, he points out: “Didn’t they say Brexit would set Britain and Europe back a long way? I remember there were scare scenarios about Brexit, but in the end everything happened without almost any problems.”

However, the conclusion of Cambridge Econometrics in research published in January 2024 is different. British experts point out that Brexit has significantly weakened growth and employment in the United Kingdom, eliminating approximately three million jobs by 2035.

The lessons of Brexit

The head of the Institute for German Economics (IW), Hubertus Bard, estimates that after a ‘Dexit’, Germany’s GDP is set to shrink by 5.5%. “It’s like we’re planning the next financial crisis,” he points out. A crisis, which would certainly be particularly painful for businesses that depend on markets and suppliers within the EU.

AfD’s Ronald Glaser doesn’t agree with all of this. “Why shouldn’t they buy our products in Italy, France, Sweden? Just because we are not in the EU? But Switzerland is not even in the EU and despite everything it exports its products to all these countries,” he says.

This view is “empty and unrealistic” opposes Hubertus Bard. “You don’t create a better model of cooperation and integration by destroying the EU.”

But even in the German public opinion few seem to approve of the idea of ​​”Dexit”. According to a survey by the political foundation Konrad Adenauer (KAS), which is close to the Christian Democratic Party (CDU), in the event of a referendum, 87% of Germans would vote to remain in the EU.

So why does the AfD insist on a declaration so radical, but also unpopular? “We don’t do politics based on opinion polls, we do what we think is right and necessary,” insists Roland Glaser from the AfD.

“A nationalist party”

Wolfgang Schroeder, professor of political science at the University of Kassel, points out that the AfD’s stance is to be expected, given its past. The party was founded in 2013 by economists who criticized European bailouts during the euro crisis. It then moved even further to the right, focusing on immigration, yet skepticism towards the euro has remained, even if it is less evident today than in the past.

“First and foremost, the AfD is a nationalist party,” Schroeder told Deutsche Welle. “It opposes globalization. From this starting point comes a mood of skepticism towards supranational institutions vis-a-vis the EU and the UN, which set different goals, serve other values ​​and are therefore considered dangerous”.

But how seriously can the AfD take the “Dexit” proposal, since the economic impasses, as well as the constitutional problems entailed by Germany’s departure from the EU, are so evident? “One can say that they do not mean it very seriously because they know that few embrace this proposal,” says Wolfgang Schroeder. “They think it costs them nothing to promise a different world.”

Edited by: Yiannis Papadimitriou