BERLIN: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party has suffered a humiliating defeat in European elections which could affect the government's future steps on migration and its Ukraine policy, a leading expert said on Monday. 'It is quite humiliating that the chancellor's party SPD has only 14% of the vote, that doesn't look very good,' Josef Janning said, adding that voters' discontent with the government's Ukraine policy, concerns about irregular migration, led to the surge of radical parties. 'It's not all about the unpopularity of the current government coalition, but it is also about the discontent in the public about two issues: One of them is support for Ukraine, the government's Russia policy, and the other issue is migration,' he said during a briefing organized by the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). Chancellor Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD) and their coalition partners suffered heavy losses in Sunday's European Parliament elections, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) made s ignificant gains and finished second with 16% of the vote. The newly formed left-wing populist party, Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), managed to win 6.2% of the vote in its first European election. Janning pointed out that both the far-right AfD and the far-left BSW fiercely opposed the government's Russia policy, its military support to Ukraine, and demanded a more strict migration policy during their election campaigns. He predicted that the election results would affect the German coalition government's future steps on migration, its foreign policy decisions, and may also create deeper tensions among coalition partners on controversial issues such as the budget. 'This coalition government has taken another hit, so it will be more nervous, and it will get more nervous as further state elections continue throughout this year,' he said, referring to the forthcoming elections in the eastern states of Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg. 'The coalition may not hold even though there is quite a strong incen tive to stick together because none of the parties can hope to gain from any snap election scenario. So, it will very much depend on how they deal with their nervousness,' Janning said. Chancellor Scholz's Social Democrats scored their worst-ever result in a European Parliament election, winning only 13.9% of the vote, nearly 2 percentage points below that of the last European elections. The co-ruling Greens Party suffered the biggest losses of the night and saw its support plummet to below 12% from 20.5% in 2019. The coalition's junior partner, the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), scored 5.2%, with a slight fall of 0.2%. DGAP's foreign policy expert Janning said the results will likely result in a more cautious approach by Scholz on major EU and foreign policy issues in the coming months. 'The German government has no incentive to take a lead position, because it's domestically so weak, and on the EU agenda it doesn't have any clear vision anyway, and this election does not reinforce the desire for change, so we will see more of the same, and the inward focus of Germany,' he said. Source: Anadolu Agency
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