As Washington steps back from underwriting European security, the parties best positioned to inherit power in Paris and Berlin are the ones most sceptical of letting Brussels run the buildup meant to replace it
Europe’s push to build an independent defence capability, prompted by an American pullback from its traditional leading role on the continent, is running into a political obstacle less visible than budget constraints or industrial capacity: the parties positioned to win the next elections in France and Germany are the ones most resistant to letting Brussels lead that effort. A Quincy Institute brief published 30 June examines how this Euroskeptic, sovereigntist current could shape the choices facing American foreign policy as Europe tries to fill the gap Washington is leaving behind.
Where the numbers stand
In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, led jointly with her protégé Jordan Bardella, comfortably leads the wide field of candidates to succeed Emmanuel Macron in next April’s presidential election. A final legal appeal decided this week that Le Pen remains eligible to run, and she has confirmed she will, with Bardella positioned to serve as her prime minister. In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Bardella signalled interest in close cooperation with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on economic reform and the European defence buildup, an overture that suggests the party sees itself shaping that process rather than simply obstructing it.
In Germany, the Alternative for Deutschland has become the country’s single most popular party, running roughly six points ahead of Merz’s CDU-CSU in recent polling, even though a federal election is not required until 2029. Merz’s own approval rating sits at around 15 per cent, a figure widely attributed to a sluggish economy, high energy costs and declining competitiveness in German industry. The AfD is targeting two state elections in the former East Germany this September, in Saxony-Anhalt on 6 September and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on 20 September, as a proving ground for governing legitimacy ahead of any future national contest.
What these parties actually want on defence
The brief’s central distinction is important: these parties are not opposed to rearmament. Both RN and AfD generally favour a stronger, more capable national defence and accept some increase in defence spending. What they reject is the premise mainstream European governments use to justify it, that Russia poses an imminent, existential threat requiring a unified continental response coordinated through EU institutions. Neither party treats the Russia-Ukraine war as a contest for Europe’s survival as a whole, a framing gap that puts them at odds with the strategic logic Brussels and NATO’s European members have used to build public support for higher spending.
That distinction carries a specific institutional consequence. Both parties’ shared Euroskepticism implies that any move toward European strategic autonomy would be led by individual member states acting through NATO and bilateral arrangements, rather than by the European Commission acquiring new powers in common foreign and security policy. Bardella, in his role leading the Patriots for Europe faction in the European Parliament, has twice brought votes of no confidence against Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, while Le Pen is described in the brief as even less likely than Bardella to accept any reinforcement of a Commission-led common security policy.
The AfD’s rebrand ahead of the September vote
The AfD held its national party conference in Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia, on 4 and 5 July, drawing roughly 20,000 counter-demonstrators from across Germany. The protests were largely peaceful and did not disrupt proceedings, aided by a substantial police presence outside the venue. Inside, speakers notably avoided the harsher anti-migrant rhetoric that critics cite as grounds for treating the party as unconstitutional, instead presenting the AfD as patriotic, pragmatic and ready to govern, a deliberate repositioning aimed at maximising its chances in the two eastern state elections.
The stakes of those elections extend beyond regional government. In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD polls at roughly 40 per cent, far ahead of the CDU-CSU in second place, to the point that forming a majority coalition without AfD participation appears increasingly implausible given the current arithmetic. The left-populist Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht has offered to join an AfD-led coalition in either state, a move that would formally breach the so-called firewall mainstream German parties have maintained against governing with the AfD since its founding. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, by contrast, a popular Social Democratic incumbent governing alongside the Left party retains plausible coalition options that would exclude the AfD even if it finishes first in the vote count.
Why Merz is resisting, and why his options are narrowing
Merz and the CDU-CSU leadership have firmly rejected any national coalition with the AfD, a position rooted substantially in the AfD’s foreign policy platform: the party favours rapprochement with Russia, opposes continued military aid to Ukraine, and supports expanding Europe’s role within NATO only insofar as that role is strictly confined to territorial defence rather than broader continental security ambitions. Merz’s difficulty is structural as much as ideological. Weak popular support for the SPD and the Greens narrows the centre-right’s available coalition partners, and if the AfD were to outpoll the CDU-CSU outright in a future contest, it would gain leverage to impose specific policy conditions on any coalition arrangement willing to include it, a scenario the current firewall is specifically designed to prevent.
The brief assesses that RN and AfD are not identical in every respect, but their shared rise complicates the assumption, widely held in Brussels and among NATO’s European leadership, that inflicting a clear defeat on Russia is a necessary precondition for ending the war in Ukraine. Because both parties would support continued defence investment without anchoring it to the premise of an imminent Russian attack on NATO territory, greater influence for either party in foreign and security policymaking could, according to the brief, open space for a genuine European diplomatic push toward ending the war rather than continuing to pursue battlefield victory as the sole acceptable outcome.
Whether that opening materialises will depend on outcomes still months away, the German state elections in September and the French presidential contest next April, neither of which has yet been decided.
