AfD’s Rise Is a Warning: Lukas Sieper on Germany’s Crisis of Political Trust

AfD’s rise in Germany can no longer be explained simply as the strengthening of the far right. It also reveals a deeper erosion of trust in established political parties and a growing demand for change among voters. Brussels Crow spoke with Lukas Sieper, Member of the European Parliament from the Renew Europe Group and the Party of Progress, about the rise of the AfD, Germany’s crisis of political credibility, the political choices of younger voters, and what these shifts could mean for European migration policy and EU–Turkey relations.

Brussels Crow | 14.09.2026 | By Kenan Erer - Turkish Version

Kenan ERER: How do you read the AfD’s record result and the CDU’s double-digit collapse – is this a Saxony-Anhalt-specific phenomenon, or an early warning sign for the coalition in Berlin?

Lukas Sieper: For me, the frightening thing is not simply that the AfD won. It is that nearly half of the voters looked at the established democratic parties and concluded that the AfD was still the better option. That should concern every democrat.

The first lesson is that the CDU’s strategy has clearly failed in its stated objective. Friedrich Merz moved his party significantly to the right and promised that a more conservative CDU would weaken the AfD. It hasn’t. If anything, the AfD has become stronger.

But we have also learned that simply shouting “extremists” is not enough. Of course, we have to call extremism what it is. But if that is your entire political strategy, you will not win dissatisfied voters back.

And that brings me to the most important point: people want change. And they are right to demand change. Germany has problems that have remained unresolved for far too long. But right now, too many people perceive the AfD as the only party offering fundamental change.

This is exactly where we, as the Party of Progress, want to offer an alternative. Democratic change does not require extremism. You can fundamentally reform this country through pragmatic politics and social progress. People are right to be frustrated when things do not work. But Putin-friendly foreign policy, attacks on minorities and undermining democratic institutions will not fix a single one of those problems.

So yes, Saxony-Anhalt is a serious warning for Berlin. But Berlin is structurally very different, and we should not simply project 43.8 percent from one state onto another. What can travel, however, is the political psychology behind the result: frustration with established parties, distrust in institutions and the feeling that mainstream politics is no longer delivering.

That is the warning Berlin should take seriously.

Kenan ERER: According to Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, the AfD now leads the CDU on party competence in economy and education for the first time. What does this say about established parties’ ability to communicate on reform issues?

Lukas Sieper: I don’t think established parties primarily have a communication problem anymore. They have a credibility problem.

For years, we have heard about reform, transformation, modernisation, digitalisation, investment and cutting bureaucracy. But voters look around and still see crumbling infrastructure, slow administration, weak economic growth, a housing shortage, problems in schools and public services that still rely on fax machines.

At some point, people understandably ask: if you have been governing for decades, why haven’t you fixed these things already? And why should I believe that this time will be different?

The AfD has a very simple answer: the system doesn’t work, the people who have been running it are responsible, so replace them. That does not mean that the AfD suddenly has the better economic or education policy. But increasingly, people seem willing to believe that they might govern differently.

So the answer cannot simply be: “We need to communicate our reforms better.” Reform has to become tangible. People have to notice that something actually changed.

And I think this is where new democratic parties have an enormous opportunity. We need to prove that democratic, European and pragmatic politics can be more disruptive towards dysfunctional structures than the populists – while still being capable of governing.

That is what the Party of Progress wants to demonstrate. You don’t have to choose between the status quo and extremism. There is a third option: change that actually works.

Kenan ERER: The polling shows sharp polarisation by age and education – among younger, less-educated voters, AfD support reaches as high as 62 percent. What strategies could democratic parties, including the Greens, pursue to win these voters back?

Lukas Sieper: The first thing democratic parties should do is stop talking about these voters as if they were a problem to be solved. They are citizens whose support has to be earned.

That means listening to them and taking their everyday concerns seriously, whether those concerns are about vocational training, wages, housing, transport, energy costs, schools, public safety or simply whether they will be able to build a stable life.

Established parties also need to stop explaining to people why their concerns are wrong. If people are worried about something, politics should ask what can actually be done about it and then deliver measurable improvements.

Secondly, political communication has fundamentally changed. Politics now happens on Instagram, TikTok and other personality-driven platforms as much as it happens on television or in newspapers. Democratic politicians have to be present there consistently and communicate in language normal people actually understand.

But that does not mean copying populist outrage. If democratic parties simply imitate the AfD’s communication style, they ultimately validate the AfD’s way of doing politics.

The third point is the most important: we need genuine political disruption within democracy.

If young voters perceive CDU, SPD, Greens and the Left as different versions of an establishment that has promised reform for years while preserving structures that don’t work, then simply telling them to “defend democracy” leaves the AfD owning the idea of change.

We need political actors who can say: yes, parts of our system are not working. Yes, we are going to change them fundamentally. And no, we do not need extremism or the destruction of democratic institutions to do that.

That is why I think the work we are doing with the Party of Progress is so important. We understand modern political communication, we take people’s concerns seriously, and we do not have decades of failed government promises behind us.

Our ambition is to offer people something that has been missing for too long: real democratic change.

Kenan ERER: How might this result affect the EU-level debate on migration and asylum policy, including negotiations on visa liberalisation and return agreements with Turkey?

Lukas Sieper: The result in Saxony-Anhalt will inevitably influence the European debate on migration. When a party like the AfD receives such a large share of the vote, democratic parties cannot simply ignore the concerns that contributed to that result.

But we should also be very careful not to interpret this election as a mandate to simply adopt the AfD’s migration policy.

For me, the lesson is that democratic politics has to prove that migration can actually be managed. Irregular migration creates real problems. Europe needs effective external borders, functioning asylum procedures and credible returns for people who have no right to remain. But pretending that migration itself is inherently negative is equally wrong. Europe faces labour shortages, demographic change and declining rural regions. Controlled legal migration can therefore also be part of the solution.

At EU level, I would not respond by immediately reopening the entire Migration and Asylum Pact. It has only recently entered into application. Now we have to make it work: protect our external borders effectively, process asylum applications quickly and fairly, ensure solidarity between Member States and return people who have no right to stay.

The election result will probably increase political pressure particularly on returns, and I understand why. An asylum system loses credibility if a final negative decision has no practical consequences. But effectiveness and humanity are not contradictions. Returns still have to respect European and international law and fundamental rights.

The same pragmatic principle should guide our relationship with Turkey. Turkey is an important partner on migration. Europe can offer cooperation and incentives, but in return we should expect measurable cooperation on preventing irregular crossings, fighting migrant smuggling and readmission.

I take the same view on visa liberalisation. I am not opposed to visa liberalisation for Turkish citizens in principle. Greater mobility can benefit both sides. But it should not become a political concession traded for short-term cooperation on migration.

The existing requirements have to be fulfilled.

Ultimately, I don’t want a European policy of simply “more migration” or “less migration”. I want migration that works: control who enters, decide asylum applications quickly and fairly, return those who have no right to stay, protect those who genuinely need protection, and create legal pathways for the people Europe needs.

That is what pragmatic migration policy should look like.

Kenan ERER: In the end, the AfD fell short of a one-party government by only 3,530 BSW votes. What does this razor-thin margin say about the fragmentation of the political centre and the challenges of coalition-building ahead in the eastern German states?

Lukas Sieper: The fact that the AfD came this close to being able to govern alone should be a serious warning for every democratic party.

But I would not interpret it simply as evidence that eastern Germany has suddenly become overwhelmingly far-right. It also shows just how fragmented the democratic political landscape has become.

And increasingly, the problem is mathematical as well as political. Votes are divided between several democratic parties while one large anti-establishment party consolidates a huge part of the dissatisfied electorate. The result is that parties with very different programmes suddenly have to govern together simply because there is no other democratic majority.

That creates a dangerous dynamic. Coalitions become broader, negotiations become harder, compromises become more difficult, and governments can start looking like alliances whose only common purpose is keeping the AfD out of power.

And if those governments then spend years fighting internally, they reinforce exactly the frustration that made the AfD strong in the first place.

That is why I think democratic parties make a mistake if their strategy is reduced to constructing increasingly complicated coalitions against the AfD.

The democratic centre has to become competitive again in its own right.

That means taking seriously why people are dissatisfied: economic insecurity, migration, infrastructure, education, demographic decline and the feeling that political institutions have become disconnected from everyday life.

The answer cannot be to copy the AfD. But it also cannot be to dismiss everyone who votes for it.

This will become increasingly important in eastern Germany if future elections produce similarly fragmented parliaments. Democratic governments have to prove that they can still make decisions, solve concrete problems and deliver visible change.

For me, those 3,530 votes therefore represent something much bigger than one extraordinarily close election result.

Democracy cannot permanently rely on arithmetic to prevent extremists from governing. We have to win those voters back.

And to do that, Germany needs democratic political forces that can offer genuine change rather than simply defend the status quo. That is precisely the political space in which I see the Party of Progress.