Germany’s political parties have converged on an unusual point of agreement: A law penalizing citizens for insulting politicians needs to change, following controversial investigations of people who mocked Chancellor Friedrich Merz as “Pinocchio” and “Lying Fritz.”

But while politicians across the spectrum agree the law needs fixing — they just can’t agree how, or when, to change it, according to a POLITICO survey of the lawmakers responsible for the issue from each of the parties represented in the Bundestag. 

“We take seriously the criticism that, in practice, it may have created the impression of a special legal privilege for politicians,” said Susanne Hierl, a lawmaker from Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). “Such preferential treatment was never the intention of the legislature.”

Moritz Oppelt, the CDU justice minister of Germany’s southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg echoed the sentiment, arguing the law should serve only its original intent of protecting local politicians, who are often subject to particular vitriol.

“Top politicians can and must be able to withstand tough criticism,” he said. “It is fundamental to our democracy, and part of our understanding of democracy in Germany, that people are free to discuss political decisions at the federal and state levels and criticize them very harshly. That does not mean that insults in the political sphere should become normalized. There are, of course, limits.”

Variations of this view find consensus across Germany’s fractured political spectrum. The far-left Left Party and far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party want the law abolished outright, while the CDU, Greens and center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) all support revising it. 

“Politicians like Friedrich Merz insult ordinary people in this country every day by calling them lazy or malingerers,” said Luke Hoss, a Left lawmaker, referring to the chancellor’s remarks that Germans should work more to boost economic growth. “The provision creates a special criminal offense that applies only to politicians and should be abolished.”

Tobias Peterka, an AfD lawmaker, said tough criticism comes with the job. “Anyone who voluntarily enters politics and exercises public authority must — as Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has repeatedly emphasized — tolerate harsher criticism than private citizens, not less,” he argued.

While a version of the law giving special protection to politicians, Section 188 of the criminal code, has existed since 1951, former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in 2021 strengthened the legislation as part of broader efforts to combat right-wing extremism and hate speech.

The reform came after the 2019 murder of CDU lawmaker Walter Lübcke by a far-right extremist and amid verbal and physical attacks on local politicians amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Lübcke had been an outspoken supporter of Germany’s refugee policy under Merkel.

The law applies to insults made publicly or through social media posts when they are linked to the politician’s public role and are deemed to significantly impede their work. Offenders face up to three years in prison or a fine for insulting politicians; defamation and “malicious gossip” carry stronger penalties.

But opinion has turned against the law following several recent investigations and prosecutions of regular people for insulting politicians. One man was fined for calling Merz “Lügenfritz,” or “Lying Fritz,” another for calling him “Fotzenfritz” (“pussy-hound Fritz”), a defamatory nickname coined by a satirical magazine. “Fritz” is a common nickname for Friedrich.

Andy Hüttner, a 66-year-old retiree from southwestern Germany, was investigated for writing “Pinocchio is coming” on a local police Facebook post about security measures for a planned visit by Merz.

“I thought calling Mr. Merz ‘Pinocchio’ was absolutely fitting because he promised so much and delivered so little,” Hüttner told POLITICO. “It never crossed my mind that anything could happen because of that comment.”

After the news of the investigation kicked off a media furor — and condemnation from U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers — the case was dropped.

Under German law, insulting any person (Beleidigung) can be a criminal offense, but the law for politicians makes the potential punishment for insults and defamation more severe.

But there’s growing agreement that the law attempting to provide extra protections for politicians has gone too far.

CDU lawmaker Hierl said local politicians still need protection. “We will therefore carefully review both the wording of Section 188 and the way it is applied,” she said.

The opposition Greens agree that the law should focus on protecting local politicians.

“Repealing Section 188 of the German Criminal Code would send the wrong signal,” Lena Gumnior, one of the party’s lawmakers, wrote in a statement. “I could, however, envision reforming Section 188 so that it applies only to elected officeholders at the municipal level.”

SPD Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig said in June that politicians must be able to bear more criticism than regular citizens, broadly echoing the position of the Greens and CDU. In June, Germany’s state justice ministers called for the law to be narrowed so that it applies to municipal officeholders. 

For the moment, however, neither Merz’s governing CDU nor the opposition Greens are preparing a legislative push for after the summer recess. 

An AfD bill to abolish Section 188 was voted down by the Bundestag, and while the party has since introduced another bill, centrist parties have vowed not to work with the far right, maintaining a so-called “firewall” around the party.

The Left party has also introduced a parliamentary motion addressing Section 188, more evidence of the broad consensus around changing the law — even if mainstream politicians haven’t gotten around to it yet.

PISA, Italy — Giorgia Meloni doesn’t want to be beaten at her own game.

With an election approaching next year and a new far-right rival emerging, the Italian prime minister — whose political origins lie in Italy’s post-fascist right — is putting aside the moderate image she has built over her four years in office and hardening her tone on migration and security.

Meloni’s government was the first in the EU to attack the Spanish government over a sudden influx of migrants from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta last week. 

While France and other countries tightened border checks, Italy went further and announced it had suspended the EU’s free-movement Schengen agreement with Madrid. Now, in Italian airports, passengers from Spain are asked to join a different line. 

Meloni’s office has made clear it has no intention of lifting the controls until at least Aug. 15, escalating the clash with Spain, which retaliated by imposing checks on travelers from Italy.

“We will not back down one millimeter on illegal immigration,” Meloni posted on X while her allies attacked the socialist Spanish government, accusing it of failing to manage migration flows. “Defending our borders, stopping human traffickers, and ensuring effective repatriation will continue to be this government’s policy,” she added.

The clash with Spain is just the latest sign that the Italian leader is doing all she can to secure her core, hard-right electorate in the face of a challenge from the right by Roberto Vannacci, a former general and member of the European Parliament.

With an election expected as early as next spring, Vannacci’s far-right National Future party has been advancing in the polls, overtaking one of Meloni’s coalition partners, the far-right League party, and gaining on another, Forza Italia, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. 

For Meloni, who began her political career in the youth wing of Italy’s post-fascist movement, the challenge strikes particularly close to home.

“There is no doubt that there is concern about containing the competition from National Future,” said Marco Tarchi, a leading right-wing political scientist. “It all boils down to a sharpening of tone. The issues — security, immigration, identity — remain the same as before.” 

During the electoral campaign that brought her to power in 2022, Meloni promised to crack down on illegal migration by putting in place a naval blockade off Italy’s coast. Though that project never ultimately happened, Meloni’s government did open detention hubs in Albania to house migrants while their asylum applications are processed. 

Vannacci, who is campaigning on security and a hard line on immigration, is calling for a more radical solution: “remigration” — a yet-to-be-detailed plan to encourage migrants to return to their countries of origin.

The crisis in Ceuta, during which tens of thousands of migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish exclave and nearly 100 died, provided Meloni with an opportunity to show that fighting irregular migration remains an absolute priority for her government.

Meloni’s reaction was “purely the result of domestic political calculations,” said Giorgio Gori, a member of the European Parliament from the left-wing Democratic Party. The Italian prime minister is trying to secure her electorate “by showing that she is loyal to the right-wing slogan and propaganda on migration and beyond.”

For Giovanni Orsina, director of the political science department at Rome’s Luiss Guido Carli University, Meloni’s priority at this stage is “that the Brothers of Italy [Meloni’s party] doesn’t start losing votes too” — in preparation for a potential alliance with Vannacci before or after next year’s election.

“Vannacci has been growing a lot in polls, especially over the past two months,” said Lorenzo Pregliasco from the YouTrend polling firm, noting that National Future is polling at over 7 percent. 

“Without Vannacci, the center-right could lose the upcoming election,” he said. “These seven points matter a lot.”

The Vannacci effect

Nicola Procaccini, Meloni’s lieutenant and co-chair of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, denies that Meloni is shifting on policy to protect herself from Vannacci.

“She stands where she has always stood,” he told POLITICO. “She simply isn’t the racist, xenophobic fascist she was made out to be when she first took office. And she isn’t one now, either.” 

Meloni is also facing a challenge to her support for Ukraine, with both the League and Vannacci advocating a softer line on Moscow, opposing military aid to Kyiv and arguing against an increase in defense spending. 

Though Meloni has portrayed herself as a strong backer of Ukraine, her reliance on the League for support has meant Italy has contributed just €3 billion in four years, roughly the equivalent of €1 a month for every Italian citizen, less than the cost of an espresso.

Italy has also declined to join NATO’s PURL (Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List), an arms-buying scheme set up last summer after U.S. President Donald Trump ended new military aid commitments to Kyiv.

Ukraine is where Meloni’s real difference with Vannacci lies, argued Tarchi, who teaches at the University of Florence and is considered the key figure of a movement called the New Right.

“Otherwise, the gap is artificially exaggerated in rhetoric and posturing for tactical reasons,” he said.

Meloni’s allies haven’t ruled out an alliance with Vannacci but they stress that the possibility will depend on where he stands on key values such as foreign policy.

If he seeks “to position Italy, alongside Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, clearly, it is not possible to stand together,” said Procaccini. “If, instead, he chooses the West — the democracies, Western nations, Western liberal democracies — then we can certainly stand together.”

Owner of X and world’s first trillionaire Elon Musk attacked French presidential candidate Marine Tondelier on Thursday, after the Greens party leader said French authorities should be able to suspend the platform during electoral campaigns in case of foreign interference.

“I demand that she be shut down for treason against France!” Musk wrote on X, prompting a strong reaction from Tondelier.

“France does not need lessons in patriotism from a foreign billionaire who thinks he gets to decide which European political leaders should be silenced. Democracy is not for sale. Not even to the richest man in the world,” she responded.

“I’d rather be accused of defending democracy than of trying to buy it.”

Musk, who is a former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, has regularly weighed in on European politics and thrown his support behind far-right candidates and parties — and France is no exception.

In July, Musk said far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was “France’s last hope,” but her National Rally party was quick to downplay his backing to avoid being associated with the controversial owner of Tesla and SpaceX.

Hard-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon also slammed Musk’s attacks against Tondelier on Thursday, before accusing the French government of not doing enough to fight foreign interference.

“The French presidential election is an open bar for all the manipulators in the world,” he wrote — a criticism Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot promptly rejected.

Earlier this week, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the government was boosting efforts to detect and punish foreign interference in the upcoming 2027 election, while presidential candidates Gabriel Attal and Édouard Philippe, as well as likely candidate Raphaël Glucksmann shared they had been victims of Russian disinformation campaigns.

BERLIN — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz doesn’t seem to think his job will be in danger when he gets back from his summer holiday.

“I’m assuming that things will have calmed down a bit by September,” he said last week, after internal dissent over his handling of a cabinet reshuffle boiled over.

He may be underestimating the pressure building within his own party.

Ahead of crucial regional elections in September — in which the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has a realistic chance of taking power in a German state for the first time — there is increasingly open discussion of a Kanzlertausch, or chancellor swap, in the fall.

Public criticism has mainly come from those ousted from government in the reshuffle. But behind the scenes, a growing number of politicians from Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) are discussing what would, by German standards, be a remarkable scenario: replacing the leader after little more than a year in the job.

Europe’s biggest economy has long been one of its most stable democracies, with no history of rattling through leaders like postwar Italy or post-Brexit Britain.

But the expected success of the AfD, in elections in which the CDU is expected to lose ground, is upending the country’s conventional political dynamics.

The theory behind a Kanzlertausch is that the conservatives will need to stem the fallout from the eastern elections and give themselves a boost by replacing a leader unable to shake his rock-bottom ratings.

But the stakes are high. The AfD — now the most popular party in national polls — would seek to capitalize on further coalition unrest. Replacing a chancellor years before the end of his term would mean venturing into largely uncharted political territory.

Only three sitting chancellors have been succeeded by a politician from the same political camp in postwar Germany: in 1963, when the 87-year-old Konrad Adenauer resigned to make way for Ludwig Erhard; in 1966, after Erhard’s coalition collapsed; and in 1974, when Social Democrat Willy Brandt stood down over an espionage scandal.

The current Kanzlertausch scenario — in which Hendrik Wüst, the premier of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, has emerged as Merz’s most likely successor — has been widely discussed in German media, including in the latest Der Spiegel cover story headlined “Palace Revolt.” 

Conservative politicians confirmed the internal debate to POLITICO, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the discussions.

The growing discontent, they said, reflected declining trust in the chancellor’s statesmanship and his expected inability to keep the party together if the AfD takes power in September.

Polls show that the AfD could win an outright majority in Saxony-Anhalt on Sept. 6, while it is poised to win in Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania and do well in Berlin on Sept. 20.

A further fear is that individual CDU politicians in eastern Germany might lend their support to an AfD-led state government after the elections — breaking Merz’s long-standing pledge never to allow the far right into government.

One called the debate “speculative” for now and said that the aftermath of the elections in eastern Germany would be “decisive” for the chancellor’s future.

They also stressed that, for now, no senior figure has publicly spoken out against Merz.

Yet the mounting unease is conspicuous in a party usually known for its discipline.

Keeping a cool head

If Merz were forced to go, that would seriously disrupt Germany’s consensus-based political system. The move would come less than two years after the previous center-left coalition fell apart and could trigger a snap election.

Kai Arzheimer, a political science professor at the University of Mainz, said the fragmentation of Germany’s party system — where centrist parties must forge sometimes awkward coalitions to keep increasingly popular fringe parties from power — has triggered a shift.

“Compared with the 1970s and 1980s, Germany has experienced relatively little political stability for quite some time now,” he said. “However, by the standards of what has become the norm in many other European countries, one could also say that Germany has simply arrived where others have been for a long time.”

Appeals for restraint have meanwhile begun to emerge from across the political spectrum.

“A Union that is tearing itself apart is of no use to anyone in the democratic center,” said Christiane Hoffmann, a former spokesperson for center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in a lengthy post on X about the current debate.

“A little stability, please,” she demanded. “There’s just headless grumbling and bleating, with no one knowing where it’s all headed. Europe is on fire. Could a few people please keep a cool head?”

How a swap could unfold

The least disruptive route would be for Merz to step aside voluntarily, allowing his successor to be elected by majority vote.

If Merz refuses to go, his opponents would have to oust him through a constructive vote of no confidence, simultaneously electing his successor. Such an extraordinary parliamentary maneuver would risk ripping apart the governing coalition of Merz’s CDU, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Social Democrats.

For now, Merz continues to enjoy the backing of leading conservative figures. 

“I am firmly convinced that Friedrich Merz will remain chancellor,” Markus Söder, the powerful state premier of Bavaria and CSU leader, said in an interview with public broadcaster ARD over the weekend. 

“It would throw the conservatives into complete disarray,” Söder said of a potential swap.

“Moreover, it could even lead to new elections. And anyone who wants new elections now — in a situation like this, after such a lead-up — is only promoting one thing: bringing radicals to power. That is why my urgent advice is to focus on the work at hand and spend less time speculating behind the scenes.”

At national level, POLITICO’s Poll of Polls puts the AfD as the single most popular party with 28 percent support, with Merz’s conservatives on 21 percent.

At the same time, only 13 percent of Germans are satisfied with Merz’s performance, according to the latest benchmark ARD-DeutschlandTrend poll released last month. That is the lowest rating for a sitting chancellor in the survey’s nearly 30-year history.

Merz’s rock-bottom ratings reflect disappointment over his efforts to revive Germany’s ailing economy and public skepticism over far-reaching pension and health care reforms that will be difficult to implement and are expected to cost the average voter money. 

For now, Merz’s most viable political strategy appears to be appealing to politicians’ risk aversion in an effort to preserve what remains of Germany’s reputation for political stability.

“I can’t imagine many people within the conservative camp saying: ‘This is the solution, and we’re willing to take any risk in the hope that we might then do better in the polls,’” said Arzheimer, the political science professor. “That would be a completely crazy idea.”

Pauline von Pezold und Frederik Schindler widmen sich in dieser Sonderfolge einem mysteriösen Politikberater, der seit der AfD-Gründung im Hintergrund mitzumischen scheint und der selbst behauptet, als bezahlter Söldner für Nachrichtendienste und Großunternehmen zu arbeiten. Gemeinsam mit der Investigativ-Journalistin Katja Riedel (WDR) beleuchten die beiden, wie der angebliche Strippenzieher intern agiert und unter anderem Personalentscheidungen durch gezielte Desinformation beeinflusst haben soll.

Sie diskutieren die Hintergründe des jüngsten Kontaktverbots, das der AfD-Bundesvorstand auf Druck von Funktionären wie Björn Höcke und Stephan Protschka gegen Rohrböck verhängt hat. Dabei gehen Pauline von Pezold und Frederik Schindler auch der Frage nach, warum viele Parteimitglieder regelrecht Angst vor seinem Einfluss haben und inwieweit dieses Phantom aktuell wieder in interne Machtkämpfe verwickelt ist.

Es geht auch um undurchsichtige Finanzquellen, die Rohrböcks luxuriösen Lebensstil und seine Einladungen an AfD-Funktionäre ermöglichen. Sie sprechen mit Katja Riedel auch über Anlagen in Liechtenstein, verschwundene Gelder von ahnungslosen Kleinanlegern und mögliche Verbindungen zum verstorbenen Milliardär August von Finck.

Der Film „Geheimes Netzwerk: Das rechte Phantom“ vom NDR ist hier online zu sehen.

„Inside AfD“ ist der POLITICO-Podcast über die umstrittenste Partei des Landes. Trotz Radikalisierung und Beobachtung durch den Verfassungsschutz wächst die AfD weiter. Wie ist das möglich? Was treibt ihre Anhänger, Strategen und Gegner an? Wie funktioniert das Innenleben der Partei? Und was bedeutet ihr Aufstieg für das politische System Deutschlands?

Antworten liefern immer mittwochs Pauline von Pezold von POLITICO und Frederik Schindler von WELT — unaufgeregt, aber kritisch.

Fragen und Feedback gern an insideafd@politico.eu.

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