The German Elections Could Transform the EU

On Feb. 23, Germans will vote in their national elections. Some recent polls indicate that the governing centrist and center-left parties could suffer major defeats, with the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) expected to finish first and second. This election will be a critical moment for Europe’s largest economy, the political and economic anchor of the European Union (EU).

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The AfD, despite being under surveillance by German domestic intelligence services for pursuing “goals that run against the human dignity of certain groups and against democracy,” has polled over 20% and gained a high-profile and controversial endorsement from billionaire Elon Musk along with support from U.S. Vice President JD Vance. In her speech accepting nomination as the AfD’s candidate for Chancellor, AfD leader Alice Weidel declared to cheers that in addition to supporting mass deportations, or “remigration,” the AfD would dismantle EU climate policies, attack diversity measures, and close Germany’s borders. While abandoning the AfD’s previous support for a German exit from the EU, such policies would nonetheless profoundly change Germany’s relationship to the Union, and given its central position, change the nature of the EU itself.

“Europe,” as an idea and a political and economic project, has a long, dynamic history shaped by debates over the nature and extent of integration. Today, far-right parties like the AfD seek to embrace a different model that rejects political integration in favor of an economic union along the lines of earlier, postwar integration. In so doing, they emphasize national sovereignty over a supranational European identity, a departure from today’s EU. They seek to transform the EU into an institution that favors nationalist politics through a radical reimagining of the EU’s powers, limiting collective action, and empowering individual member states. If carried out, these reforms would put European politics on a radically new course.

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Ideas of European integration long predate the EU as it exists today. After World War I and the disillusion of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, in 1923, Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, Czech citizen and son of an Austro-Hungarian noble diplomat, founded the “Paneuropa” movement, an early attempt at formulating a vision of a Pan-European Federation. Recognizing Europe’s need for political and economic unity to compete with other world powers, Coudenhove-Kalergi’s imagined federation would unite the fallen continental empires into a political and economic union to compete with the Americans, British, and Soviets for world influence. While he gained followers among European conservatives, the Paneuropa movement was banned by Nazi Germany.

Religious ideology also played an important role in other early 20th century conceptions of European unity. The German concept of “Abendland,” meaning the “Christian West,” was rooted in King Charlemagne’s Carolingian Empire and emphasized Christian unity against the “East.” Many primarily Catholic political proponents of the Abendland idea between the world wars were not supporters of democracy, nor of Paneuropa’s economic union. Instead, they sought to construct a political union based on shared moral and religious values in Western Europe defined by an anti-liberal, anti-modern, and hierarchical political system.

However, the immense destruction wrought by Nazi Germany’s violent continental order during World War II prompted postwar visions of European integration to embrace democratic principles. This approach aligned with the priorities of the United States during the early Cold War, enmeshing West Germany into an international order meant to protect against future conflict. The postwar period then witnessed a proliferation of supranational integrationist projects in Western Europe. The two most significant focused on economic integration were the European Economic Community (EEC) which, established in 1957, was later re-founded as the EU in 1992, and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), established in 1960.

The EEC was anchored in the postwar Franco-German alliance and grew out of a 1951 agreement regulating Western Europe’s coal and steel industries. It established a common market for general trade along with external tariffs on non-EEC members and a shared European law between member states. The EFTA, led by Britain, while establishing a common market for trade, did not create a unified external tariff policy nor create a supranational system of law coordinating its members. Despite these differences, both the EEC and EFTA prioritized economic integration as a prerequisite for political integration.

Other, more radical proposals for European unity instead called for full, political integration simultaneous to economic integration. One of the most radical visions was proposed by Oswald Mosley, former British Fascist party leader, who argued in the 1940s and 50s for “Europe a Nation”—a full economic and political integration of Europe into a single state that also integrated European colonies in Africa into a single entity under Apartheid to maximize efficiency of resource extraction.

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While the EEC pursued a concrete policy of economic integration through its common market, it was also inspired by the shared political commitments of its founders. Many of the EEC’s founding fathers were Christian Democrats, such as Germany’s first postwar Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of the CDU, who regularly invoked the Abendland and spoke of reestablishing German and European politics on the spiritual foundations of Western Christianity. A center-right political ideology inspired by Catholicism, known as “Christian Democracy” emphasized a third way politics between Soviet Communism and American Capitalism. They sought to create a European social market economy which combined capitalist competition and social welfare inspired by Catholic social teaching. Dominating the EEC’s founding decades, Christian Democracy was, and remains, the most significant force in the European Parliament.

The EEC’s founding treaty committed members to pursuing an “ever closer union,” and its subsequent development into the EU was characterized by expanding powers and policies which have deepened its members’ political and economic integration, such as the beginning of democratic elections to the European parliament in 1979, the creation of the Schengen Area in 1985 which led to the abolition of border controls between member states, and the introduction of the Euro in 1999. As the EU’s powers have expanded, so have perceptions of it being a slow and bureaucratic institution which impinges on member states’ sovereignty, arguments which factored into the 2016 Brexit referendum and which are regularly cited by Eurosceptic parties like the AfD who argue the EU is anti-democratic.

Now, in recognition of Britain’s economic decline resulting from their departure, emphasis among parties skeptical of European integration has shifted away from exit referendums in support of reimagining the EU and its institutions. This newfound emphasis should not be seen as moderation, but as a calculated reading of political winds which point towards the far-right becoming a serious governing force, rather than purely oppositional.

Evidence of this trend can be seen in Italy and the Netherlands, where far-right parties have entered government and rejected previous support for membership referendums for cooperation with center-right conservatives. The AfD’s electoral program advocates for a return to a “Europe of the Fatherlands,” achieved through extreme reforms that would limit the powers of the EU in the aim of returning “sovereignty” to individual states. Their vision of a new “European Economic and Interest Community” recenters a common market economic union while eliminating the Euro as a shared currency, seeking national autonomy in security policy for restrictive immigration measures, and attacking what they consider to be an overgrown EU bureaucracy.

A Europe of “the Fatherlands,” as the AfD propose, would turn back the clock and abandon aspects of the EU’s political integration. While often the EU’s opponents on the far-right have led to the Union being associated with progressivism, growing illiberalism in European politics and support for far-right parties like the AfD challenge these more recent perceptions. The construction of the European Union has some roots in conservative and reactionary politics. Indeed, we have seen such reactionary Europes in the past and might again in the future.

Evan Richardson is a PhD student in history at the University of Virginia and previously received a master’s in British history from the University of Oxford. He researches the political and intellectual history of European integration.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

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