BERLIN — As if dysfunctional Italians, resentful Greeks, and reluctant Cypriots weren't enough trouble, German Chancellor Angela Merkel now faces an obstacle much closer to home in her efforts to save Europe's monetary union from collapse. And with elections upcoming, she might even have a game-changing challenger on her doorstep.
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The new anti-euro Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is well-positioned to capitalize on rising voter discontent with tax-payer bailouts of mismanaged and corrupt southern European governments. The party's self-confident leader, Bernd Lucke, sees a chance to defeat Merkel's wobbly governing coalition in September's federal election. "Many of Angela Merkel's supporters will vote for us. And when she loses public support, this will be the end of her political life," Lucke said recently. If this happens, it could put Merkel's triage efforts, and perhaps the entire effort to save the eurozone, into jeopardy.
Lucke is a deeply sober and analytical 50-year-old economics professor at the University of Hamburg. He spent 33 years as a card-carrying member of Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union party (CDU), before founding AfD this February. For Lucke, the tipping point came in 2010, when Germany bailed out Greece in violation of the EU's founding document, the Maastricht treaty. He told the Telegraph that "It communicated the feeling that governments were not bound by law, and it introduced a policy which was economically misguided. It made me feel homeless in my party."
Now, his new party seeks to abolish the euro and return Germany to the Deutsche mark, which passed out of existence in 2002 with the introduction of the common currency. He argues that a phased-in process of currency reform could enable the Deutsche mark to again become Germany's currency by 2020. According to Lucke, this would relieve Germany of the burden of carrying the debt for bankrupt or near-bankrupt southern European countries and decrease the current tensions and resentments in Europe.
In April, the party's 1,300 members elected Lucke -- along with entrepreneur and chemist Frauke Petry and journalist Konrad Adam -- to lead AfD. And though it's still in its infancy, the party seems primed to take advantage of Germany's growing anti-euro sentiment. According to a 2010 Infratest Dimap poll, 57 percent of German citizens regret the introduction of the euro; more than one-third would like the Deutsche mark to be, once again, immediately reinstated as the country's currency.
Still, Lucke's new party has a ways to go. According to an April poll by the research institute INSA-Meinungstrend, the AfD could secure 4 percent of the vote in the federal election. And yet the numbers show the AfD cutting into Merkel's constituency. Just weeks after the party's conference in April, AfD membership enrollment continues its steady climb from a little over 5,000 registered members in late March to nearly 10,000 now. The AfD's treasurer Norbert Stenzel told the German daily Rheinische Post in late April that "at this time we are winning between 100 and 200 new members each day."
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