On September 20, 2026, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a major mandate in yet another State election in Germany , this time in the coastal province of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, also a former East German region. It won 38.2% of the vote.
This is the second major victory for the AfD after winning the State elections in Saxony-Anhalt earlier this month.
Further, over the course of his term, the Merz-led government has gone on to lower some of the energy costs and has introduced tax and health reforms. The government also announced that it will set up a house-building association to support social house-building and large-scale, industrialised constructions. Even before assuming power, he had announced a ‘de facto entry ban’ — a strict rejection of entry to all undocumented migrants and asylum seekers.
Basic allowance, child allowance and child benefits have also been increased. Mr. Merz has also adopted a harder-line position when it comes to rules and controls around immigration and asylum.
Along with easing the debt brake, a special fund of 500 billion euros for infrastructure spending was also approved. Moreover, in July 2025, he suspended family reunification for beneficiaries of subsidiary protection for an initial period of two years.
Last year, the federal government also rescinded the fast-track citizenship programme, which let “well-integrated” migrants gain citizenship in three years instead of five.
However, the mandate in both States is not enough for the AfD to form a government on its own. The strategy of ‘ Brandmauer ’, or a firewall against the AfD, adopted by major political parties to keep the far-right party out of power, makes the question of a coalition government very tentative. A jubilant AfD, which had warned Mr. Merz to resign now. When Mr. At the time, Mr. He had promised to counter the rise of the far-right party and alleviate concerns regarding high energy bills, rising inflation, and immigration. Prior to the elections, Mr.
The biggest upset, however, was the crash of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which failed to win the threshold 5% of vote share, which makes it ineligible to be a part of the representative body of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania province. It will not even have one seat in the regional Parliament — the first such instance in more than 70 years of modern German history. Merz first took up the reins of government last year following the federal elections, his win was overshadowed by the staggering rise of the AfD, which stood in second place after the CDU and its Bavarian sister-party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), with almost 20% of the vote share. Implemented after the 2008 global economic crisis, the debt brake places strict limits on how much federal and State governments can borrow; the federal government is required to limit annual borrowing to 0.35% of GDP. However, considering the shrinking of the German economy for two consecutive years in a row, in 2023 and 2024, the government felt the need to end years of economic slowdown. In March 2025, the government of Chancellor Merz introduced a major debt package, wherein, via a Constitutional amendment, Mr. Merz pushed through an exemption to allow unlimited borrowing for defence and security purposes exceeding 1% of GDP.
Merz that “his time was running out” in the Bundestag (Parliament’s lower house) earlier this month, did not mince words in attacking the premier. Party co-leader Tino Chrupalla said that he expected Mr. “That would truly be a relief for this country,” he said. Merz had remarked that the AfD was “a real alarm bell for political parties”. Merz had said that he wouldn’t increase national borrowing by breaking Germany’s debt brake rule.
