Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The far right’s biggest German state result in decades has just landed in a NATO logistics corridor.
The September 6 vote in Saxony-Anhalt has been read across Europe as a domestic German story, a firewall stress test for Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and a new push by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) into regional power.
In Warsaw, it is being read as something more specific: a possible bottleneck on the road that American and French reinforcements would use to reach Poland’s eastern border.
Speaking on Polish broadcaster Radio VOX FM, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called th AfD’s performance “a really concerning signal” and said the geography of the state itself was part of the problem.
If “American, French or other troops wanted to reach Poland, we have a problem, because Saxony[-Anhalt] is between Berlin and the old West German border,” Sikorski said, quoted by Polish business daily Forsal.
The AfD took 43.8 percent in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6, more than double its result in the previous state election and roughly two and a half times the 17.2 percent scored by Merz’s Christian Democrats, Al Jazeera reported.
The party won 39 of 83 seats in the state parliament, three short of a majority, and no established party has agreed to enter a coalition with it.
Why a state result matters for NATO logistics
Germany is the reception hub for almost every land route into NATO’s eastern flank.
The Bundeswehr’s own doctrine states that “foreign armed forces must obtain prior authorisation for any transit through or deployment to Germany,” and that coordination with state-level interior authorities is required, “particularly for large-scale deployments involving several thousand military personnel,” according to the Bundeswehr Joint Force Command.
Foreign policy is set in Berlin, not in the state capitals. But an AfD-run state government in Magdeburg would not need to formally block a transit to make it slower, according to Polish Institute of International Affairs analyst Lukasz Jasinski, quoted by Gosc.pl:
An AfD government in Saxony-Anhalt could not stop German support for Poland or the Baltic states, he said, but could “hinder military transits passing through the state’s territory.”
Warsaw links Berlin’s far right to its own
Sikorski used the interview to draw a straight line from AfD co-leader Alice Weidel to Poland’s own nationalist right, arguing that Weidel’s line on the European Union echoed recent remarks by Konfederacja politician and deputy Sejm speaker Krzysztof Bosak.
“For years I have been warning our nationalists to be careful what they wish for, because when nationalists win elsewhere, it could get rough,” Sikorski said, per Forsal.
The German Marshall Fund, in an analysis of the vote, cautioned that a state result does not equal a shift in German foreign policy: “a state government cannot set federal foreign policy,” it said, while warning that the win still hands the AfD “a far larger platform to press Berlin” on Ukraine aid and relations with Moscow, according to GMF.
Saxony-Anhalt’s new parliament is due to convene later this autumn, with coalition talks between the CDU and other non-AfD parties expected to determine who governs the state.
