In a editorial published last August 22 on The Sun 24 hours, Carlo Bastasin dedicates an in-depth analysis to the new Eurosceptic party alternative for Deutschland (AfD). He does so in heated and dramatic tones, portraying AfD as an extremist formation, dangerous for the fate of German democracy and for European integration. Bastasin is certainly right on one point: AfD can certainly contribute to increasing instability on the German political scene, preventing the formation of a stable government majority and creating scenarios that some Teutonic journalists have already defined as "Italians". Many arguments, however, are unconvincing. Credited with around 3 percent of the votes two weeks after the vote, the Alternative formulates a diagnosis of the crisis that appeals to many economists who disagree with the policy of bailouts followed by the Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
Even Wolfgang Münchau, in a article written for Der Spiegel about ten days ago, he praised the AfD's theses, while not sharing the rather drastic consequences to which it arrives. In a nutshell, the German Eurosceptics, gathered around a group of journalists and economics professors with liberal-conservative leanings, are convinced that the origin of all present evils lies in the architecture of the Economic and Monetary Union as it was created in the the nineties. A single currency and seventeen different economies without sufficient coordination risk causing trade imbalances such as those that have occurred over the past ten years. Since today the correction is very expensive for German taxpayers but also for the Mediterranean countries, Professor Bernd Lucke, leader of the movement, constantly explains, it is better to go back to national currencies or possibly split the Eurozone in two. On the other hand, however, the AfD does not promote any form of economic nationalism, but strongly supports the single market and, on some issues concerning European economic integration, appears even closer to social democratic and ecological ideas, even if from the program available online (actually a few sentences to effect…) does not emerge.
In particular, Lucke said he was in favor of eliminating tax competition between member states by imposing a single rate for the whole EU. Not exactly a dangerously nationalist proposal, but one that is quite popular in federalist circles. The AfD electorate itself certainly does not seem right-leaning, as many foreign observers and Bastasin himself fear. As a poll by the Allensbach Institut last spring revealed, the voters of the Alternative would come partly from the pool of abstentionists and partly from the Piratenpartei and Die Linke. Even if it were to enter the Bundestag, the AfD would not be a brake on the Chancellor's policy any more than the current Parliament has been. Contrary to what Bastasin argued, in fact, the appeals to the Constitutional Tribunal on the rescue mechanisms all took place through the instrument of direct appeal (constitutional complaint) that every citizen who feels harmed in a fundamental right can exercise. Not to mention that it is not necessary that there is AfD al Bundestag to appeal to Karlsruhe, given that all the so-called anti-EU were also supported by the parliamentary group of Die Linke (and even the Greens) as well as by individual members of the Bundestag of various color across the cd. Organstreitverfahren, the judgment for conflict of attributions between powers, which protects parliamentary groups and also individual deputies.
