Erfurt wakes up to the usual Monday routine, cool and rainy after the heatwave of the previous week and especially after the turbulent weekend that hosted the federal congress of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
The much-anticipated political event ended with a figure that weighs more than any speech: 81 percent of the votes gathered by co-chair Alice Weidel in her re-election as party leader. Two days of work, very few internal skirmishes, an agenda cleared with an almost unusual speed for a formation accustomed to factional tensions: the reason lies in the regional elections in the East awaiting the party after the summer, in Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and Berlin.
It is there, according to Weidel, that AfD aims to make the leap never achieved so far, from opposition to regional government: “This would immediately lead to a normalization of our party,” she said speaking about the possibilities of entering the executive of the Land of Magdeburg, where polls give AfD at 41% and the former left-wing firebrand Sahra Wagenknecht, whose party Bsw would be at 5%, promises to create an alliance.
The congress confirmed the dual leadership without shocks, postponing the issue of a single leadership to an undetermined date: Weidel achieved a growing result, the other co-chair Tino Chrupalla a lower one compared to two years ago, but the pair remains in command for another two years. In their closing speeches, both insisted on the need to “leave the opposition” and prepare to govern, while three electoral appointments in September approach that will determine if the ambition has solid foundations.
HANDELSBLATT: WEIDEL WINNER, BUT REAL POWER REMAINS WITH THE RADICAL WING
The economic daily from Düsseldorf notes that, at first glance, the Erfurt congress appeared as a show of strength by the leader, able to obtain a consensus clearly superior to that of her counterpart. From this stem precise expectations: Weidel should attract the bourgeois electorate, reassure economic circles, and credit AfD as a force capable of governing.
But it is precisely in this success, warns Handelsblatt, that the greatest risk lies: “On stage the co-chair appears strong, while within the party’s internal balances her room for maneuver depends on how much the most radical wing is willing to concede to her, and the power relations in the federal executive committee continue to shift in that direction.” Hence the need, for Weidel, to “not lose control of the course, because entrepreneurs and moderate voters still undecided could be won over only on the condition that the party does not radicalize further.”
DIE WELT: MORE DISCIPLINED PARTY, BUT RISKS OF THE EXTREME WING REMAIN
For Die Welt, the AfD emerging from Erfurt appears “more disciplined and more aware of its political weight” than in the past, with Weidel confirmed as the main protagonist of the event.
The Berlin daily emphasizes, however, that the way the leadership chooses to manage the more radical components of the movement “remains a variable full of unknowns” for the party’s near future.
FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG: MODERATION IN RHETORIC IS NEEDED
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung invites the newly re-elected co-chair to steer her formation towards more moderate positions. The commentary notes that AfD leaders like to evoke the word responsibility at solemn moments of the congress, but “if this word had a real meaning it should translate into a revision of the tones and public language of the party.”
ARD: A SKILLED PERFORMANCE, BUT POSTPONED CONFLICTS DO NOT DISAPPEAR
For the first state television channel Ard, the Erfurt congress was a “staged event,” under the motto “no quarrels,” to the point that at times it seemed “more like an election rally than a party assembly,” with every choice subordinated to the success of the upcoming elections. “A line that, from an organizational point of view, can be defined as professional,” the broadcaster notes, “but that does not make internal conflicts disappear: it simply postpones them.” And tensions, Ard stresses, are not lacking, “starting from those between the two leaders, who frequently contradict each other while staging a harmony that does not exist, as was already the case years ago, only today it becomes increasingly difficult to mask.”
In Erfurt, Weidel prevailed on several points, relegating the co-chair to the background, so much so that this congress could represent the beginning of the end of the dual leadership. For the moment Chrupalla once again appears the luckier one, “while the party, absorbed by the imminent electoral round, has no margin to open an internal showdown.”
ZDF: IN ERFURT DISCIPLINE FIRST, THEN DEBATE
The public broadcaster Zdf describes a congress built “around the watchword discipline rather than discord,” so much so that the most divisive programmatic issues were postponed to the thematic congress scheduled for next year.
“On the path to power the party does not want to take risks” and in 2029, the year of the next federal elections, no congress is planned, so as not to divert funds and personnel from the election campaign. In the concluding statement, Chrupalla and Weidel nevertheless reiterated that AfD “is preparing for early federal elections”: “We are a popular party, we want to take responsibility for our country,” Weidel said before the audience of flags.
BAYERISCHE RUNDFUNK: A CONGRESS ABOUT PEOPLE, NOT CONTENT
Also for the Bavarian broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Erfurt appointment was built “around people rather than issues,” with the most controversial motions set aside so as not to disturb the election campaign in the East. The greatest attention focused on Ulrich Siegmund, AfD’s top candidate in Saxony-Anhalt and first in the regional polls, welcomed amid selfies and black-red-gold flags: the overall image conveyed is that of a party that shows confidence in victory and already projected towards government experience.
