Germany in 2024: A year of crisis and discontent?

First modification: 01/13/2024 – 01:52

4 min

Germany's Vice Chancellor, Robert Habeck, was returning from his end-of-year vacation on an island in the north of the country when he faced an unexpected problem that is generating a strong debate in the country.

A group of farmers prevented Habeck and his wife from getting off the boat that was transporting them, some protesters tried to force themselves onto the boat and the Police had to intervene with pepper spray.

The protest was described by senior government representatives as a “shameful” action that “attacks the rules of democratic coexistence.”

Farmers specifically criticized the Government's plans to cut agricultural subsidiesan issue that has led to protests in several cities in Germany in recent days.

The demonstrations are generating concern among analysts and politicians due to the aggressiveness in some cases and a possible infiltration of the extreme right.

And more generally because they are seen as examples of how tense tempers are in Germany at the beginning of 2024.

And this new year will bring very important challenges for Europe's main economic power.

Beyond the high levels of social discontent, the Government still feels the impact of a serious budget crisis that is forcing it to make cuts to meet its great purposes.

He economic performance It doesn't seem very positive. The intelligence agencies are on alert for possible terrorist attacks.

In addition, there will be regional elections that could confirm at the polls the rise in the east of the country of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD).

And to all this is added a foreign policy marked by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East that impact the country in everything from national security to defense spending.

A possible triumph of the extreme right in the east

The Germans are aware of these political tensions and, according to a survey this month, they see the future of the country with insecurity. 83 percent are concerned and only a small minority believe that the big problems are going to improve.

Likewise, only 17 percent are satisfied with the Government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a coalition of three very different parties that has been characterized more by controversies and public disputes than by harmony.

This crisis in the coalition is benefiting, above all, a party that is playing a key year in 2024: the AfD, the far-right party that is particularly strong in the east of the country, in what was the German Democratic Republic until the reunification in 1990.

In three eastern states there will be elections in the second half of the year (Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg) and in all three the AfD leads the polls.

Few believe that the AfD could end up governing in those regions, since to do so it would need governing coalitions with parties that, at least until now, have refused to work with the AfD.

But there are many who claim that the party may well end up as the most voted political force in the east of the country – and this in itself would generate a political earthquake in a country with the history of Germany.

The AfD has been criticized for relativizing the Holocaust, for its positions against migration and Islam, and several of its groups have been formally described by the intelligence services as extremists.

The latter means that the authorities consider that the AfD, at least in part, pursues “anti-constitutional objectives.”

Turbulent foreign policy and security problems

But in addition to social unrest, protests and the possible regional rise of the AfD, the authorities are also concerned about the impact of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

In both cases, only a small minority of Germans believe that the two conflicts will end this year.

And in fact, both Vice Chancellor Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock traveled to the Middle East this week to reinforce diplomatic efforts that could lead to a resolution of the conflict in that region.

A conflict that has generated intense debates among Germans and that has the authorities on alert.

Already at the end of last year, the head of the internal intelligence service warned that Germany faces a “complex and tense threat” that was exacerbated after the Hamas attacks against Israel last October.

Thomas Haldenwang He assured that the authorities have been observing for some time the “declared intention” of Islamists to commit attacks in the West and that an Islamist attack could be committed in Germany at any time.

This probably reinforces that sense of insecurity and discontent that Germans feel in 2024, a year that began in an intense and difficult way from a political, economic and social point of view.