German anti-euro party stalls before election

Just three months since its launch in a blaze of publicity, Germany's anti-euro party is failing to strike a chord with voters and is unlikely to fulfil predictions it will pose a threat to chancellor Angela Merkel in September's election.

Despite recent developments in Greece and Portugal reviving fears of another flare-up in the euro crisis, polls show support for the Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) languishing around 2 per cent, short of the 5 per cent needed to enter parliament.

Broad public approval for Dr Merkel’s handling of the euro zone crisis and a pro-European political consensus combined with Germany’s relative immunity to the problems means there is little appetite for an anti-euro party, pollsters and analysts say.

Led by a motley group of mainly academics and journalists, the AfD also lacks a charismatic figure in the style of Italy’s Beppe Grillo, whose stunning electoral success this year gave hope to populist movements elsewhere. It has even suffered from a perception that some members have links to the far right.

"Things aren't bad enough for Germans to vote for an anti-euro party. Germany is doing alright, people aren't worried about their job or pension," said Carsten Koschmieder, a politics researcher at Berlin's Free University.

“There is simply no question mark over the currency itself in the election,” he said. Like many other analysts, he sees the AfD scoring around 2 per cent.

In stark contrast to other euro zone states where hostility to Europe is growing due to painful austerity measures and soaring youth unemployment, the crisis has had a limited effect on Europe's biggest economy.

German growth has slowed, but the jobless rate of 6.8 per cent is close to 20-year lows and the biggest union has agreed an inflation-busting wage hike.

Most Germans are committed to the EU, and the main political parties agree keeping the euro is in the national interest.

"The euro was never popular in Germany and still isn't, but people are used to it and voters see no reason to vote for the AfD," said Manfred Guellner, head of the Forsa polling group.

In fact the euro crisis has not featured much in a campaign which has in the last couple of weeks been dominated by reports of intrusive surveillance methods employed by US intelligence.

The problem for the pro-European Social Democrats (SPD) is that they cannot attack Dr Merkel on European policy, including bailouts, because they agree with her.

Dr Merkel’s conservatives lead the SPD by up to 19 percentage points in polls. But it is unclear if she will be able to form another centre-right coalition with the Free Democrats (FDP) as their support has sunk to a third of its level in the 2009 vote.

Launched in April with the headline-grabbing policy of an “orderly dismantling of the euro”, the AfD made waves at first.

The party briefly rattled some of Dr Merkel's conservatives and some in the more euro-sceptical FDP and they denounced it as a group of scaremongers and populists. Yet the AfD has signed up 15,000 members and has 39,000 Facebook fans.

That may be tiny in an electorate of 62 million, but analysts say the party could still take votes from the conservatives and FDP, possibly even robbing the FDP of crucial points it needs to enter parliament and Dr Merkel needs for another centre-right government.

Reuters