Why it seems east Germany is everywhere

A transnational perspective is needed to curb nationalistic populism and bring Europeans closer.

After the elections to the European Parliament and the recent elections in France—and two months before regional elections in three eastern-German states particularly prone to the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)—agitation is great. Shall we soon be asking whether Germany’s far right is on the brink of power, having worried for years about France before on Sunday the brakes were applied by a new ‘popular front’?

Despite the country-specific differences, the French and German regions in which the right-wing parties celebrate their biggest electoral successes have a lot in common. Their inhabitants seem closer to one another than to their German and French co-citizens, by whom they often feel misunderstood. Since they no longer feel represented by their national governments, they do not shy away from voting for a far-right party—a party that in their eyes deserves a chance because things anyway can’t get any worse.

In these regions, the grand Volksparteien (people’s parties) that used to represent the working class living there have experienced an unparalleled decline. This void has been readily and steadily filled by Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) and the German AfD—in some parts the established parties do not even put up election posters any more.

In prototypical towns such as Bruay-la-Buissiére in the north of France (Pas-de-Calais) and Bautzen in the east of Germany (Sachsen), populations have fallen by around a third over past decades. In the European elections, in Bautzen the AfD achieved one of the highest results ever in Germany, with a vote share of 39 per cent, while in Bruay-la-Buissiére the RN secured a record share in France of 63 per cent. The two xenophobic parties are most successful precisely where people are least confronted with the scapegoated migrants—but where structural change, with its inhumane costs, has hit with some force. Unfolding over decades, this represents a cultural shift, not a superficially conceived ‘protest vote’.

Reference points

If the anomie of east Germany now seems to be everywhere, it is also because of experiences, and historical disappointments, shared by other states in central and eastern Europe which underwent system change (albeit each along its own path) after the fall of the Berlin wall. Yet these common reference points have not played a role in inner-German public discourses and political debates, for instance when it comes to persistent wage differences between east and west.

That political authorities in Germany have failed to include not only east-German but also eastern-European perspectives for a long time has many sources. Among others, the state- and identity-building projects of the transformation countries tended to draw boundaries within the east (and west) rather than emphasise similarities. As a consequence, lots of people in the east-German Länder learned to compare with their west-German fellow citizens—against whom they could only lose—although in many respects east Germans born or raised in the postwar decades have much more in common with their fellow EU citizens from post-Soviet countries.

Within the European Union, wage differences among members states kept decreasing until recently, as part of the catch-up process of the member states joining since 2004. Moreover, there has been a pronounced difference in the transformation paths between the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) and other post-Soviet states. In Poland in 2022, employees earned an average of €5 per hour, while the average in today’s east Germany was €19.08 (against €23.22 in the west).

While acknowledging the structural differences between east- and west-German regions, in that perspective the east no longer appears as the eternal second. Relativising, and properly addressing, the inner-German differences—without of course neglecting the failures in the internal integration process—could also grant the historically rooted identities more room. This could open up an understanding that people socialised in the old DDR are not incapable of acting as democrats, but may be reluctant to replace the old orthodoxies and missing freedoms with new neoliberal doctrines and heteronomies.

Freedom of movement

These transnational resonances among structural and political transformations in Europe have not changed the mindsets of those politicians who still frame their ideas within the national container. Conversely, politicians at EU level are inadequately aware of the risk that European imbalances have for the future of the European project.

Freedom of movement lies at the heart of European economic and social integration and provides positive outcomes for most citizens, businesses and the union as a whole. But that comes at a high price for member states with high net emigration, such as Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania.

Since 2004, millions have emigrated from these newer EU members: fully one-fifth of Romania’s working-age population lives in other member states. On top are those who work abroad as posted or seasonal workers without shifting their permanent residence, but nevertheless tearing a hole in their social relationships, whether as partners, parents, colleagues, neighbours or team members.

Many professionals who have completed an expensive education in their home countries’ educational systems now practise (or in the worst case do a job beneath their qualifications) abroad. This brain drain has caused a ‘demographic panic’ in central- and eastern-European countries, fostering resentments boosting the illiberal political forces. What from an elite level may appear as EU-wide social integration is felt as painful disintegration in the countries affected.

Climate of resentment

As long as EU integration continues to produce such harmful imbalances, the impression will solidify of a zero-sum game—or, even worse, a lose-lose situation. Meanwhile, increasing contestation of liberal values among political elites conjures up a world of welfare ‘scroungers’, ‘criminal’ migrants and ‘selfish’ cosmopolitans. This contributes to a social climate of resentment, envy and finger-pointing, encouraging those who have no scruple about voting for illiberal parties because they believe they have nothing further to lose—either because they do not belong to the groups that stand to be on the losing side of illiberal anti-human policies or because they feel that they have lost too much in the past.

Without addressing these domestic and cross-country imbalances, neither the EU nor highly divided countries, such as France or Germany, will be able to grow together. Yet by adopting a broader, transnational perspective political actors can address peoples’ needs and concerns without giving up on liberal and social values.