It is not just France. In Italy, Belgium, Germany, Albania, Greece, Portugal, and Spain, there are also protests underway. Most of the mobilizations have a common background: protesting against the rising cost of living. In the case of Italy, the protests have escalated this weekend in parallel to those in France. In the north of the country, the mobilizations have ended in riots, especially in Milan, where the police have arrested 271 people and the Prosecutor's Office has requested preventive detention for eleven protesters.

Serhiy Kuznetsov faces a historic trial starting today. He is the Ukrainian accused of leading the military group that, under orders from Kyiv, in September 2022 sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines, located in the Baltic Sea and through which, until a few weeks before the attack, Europe was supplied with Russian gas. The trial began this Wednesday with a two-hour hearing in Hamburg (Germany), where the Public Prosecutor's Office accuses the Ukrainian soldier of committing a war crime for having attacked civil infrastructure with combat methods prohibited against civilian targets.

Vladimir Putin is intensifying both his full-scale war against Ukraine and his shadow war against the rest of Europe. His main goal against Europe is to end the support that the continent gives to Ukraine, in order to be able to subjugate the country, a milestone he considers existential both for the future of Russia and for his own future. While in Europe we must prepare as well as we can to defend ourselves against all kinds of hybrid attacks, the central axis of our response should be to redouble support for Ukraine. Ukraine is his main target. It is there – and only there, not in a struggle of a thousand small hybrid attacks – where Putin's Russia can be defeated and effectively deterred.

Germany's Supreme Court ordered this Wednesday the pre-trial detention of the former head of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), August Hanning, who was arrested yesterday accused of spying for a foreign country. According to the Prosecutor General's investigation, he is suspected of espionage, disclosure of state secrets, and attempted treason against the homeland. Hanning, eighty years old, faces a prison sentence of between six months and ten years if he ends up being convicted.

The far-right is now presiding over a Parliament in Germany, something that had not happened since the end of Nazism. A month after Alternative for Germany (AfD) swept the elections in Saxony-Anhalt, its candidate, Tobias Rausch, has become the new president of the regional chamber with the support of the anti-immigration and pro-Russian BSW party, which split from Die Linke. "The nonsense of the sanitary cordon is over," noted Sarah Wagenknecht, founder of BSW. "Of course, the largest group in the chamber must hold the presidency."

A former head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND), August Hanning, was arrested this Tuesday accused of spying for a foreign country, according to the Prosecutor General's Office. Authorities suspect that Hanning, who presided over the BND between 1998 and 2005, attempted to commit high treason by acting in the service of another country's intelligence agency after he had already left his post. According to the Prosecutor's statement, he is being investigated for alleged espionage constituting high treason, obtaining state secrets, attempted high treason, and activities as an intelligence agent. And some German media have already described it as one of the most significant espionage scandals in the country since the Cold War.

Far-right nationalist populist parties are leading the way everywhere, from Washington to Warsaw. Why, then, be so alarmed by the small electoral victories of one of these parties, Alternative for Germany (AfD)? “Because it’s Germany!” is the almost instinctive answer in many heads around the world.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz's CDU has obtained the worst result in its history in regional elections this weekend in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. A "disaster" admitted by the chancellery and a humiliation for a Merz who, upon coming to power, promised to reverse the strength of a far-right that has been tailing him for some time. The popularity of Alternative for Germany, for the moment, has no ceiling. In Saxony-Anhalt it was on the verge of governing, for the first time, in a German state, and on Sunday it won the elections in the land of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in eastern Germany, and came in third in Berlin. While Merz's political survival is increasingly threatened, the AfD continues to grow in the shadow of economic and industrial decline, which has slowed the German engine, and a feeling of insecurity that is fueled by the criminalization of rising immigration in the last decade. But, above all, the far-right has demonstrated a great capacity to exploit voters' disillusionment with the political establishment of the Grand Coalition.

Angela Merkel held the German chancellery between 2005 and 2021, 16 years during which she exercised undisputed leadership in her country that also extended to Europe. Her formula combined economic austerity with gestures of great moral stature, such as the opening of borders to Syrian refugees during the 2015 crisis. Managing her legacy, however, is proving especially complicated for Germany, with a stagnant economy and a rise of the extreme right that was unthinkable just a few years ago.

The nightmare continues for German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. If the defeat of his party, the CDU, and the triumph of the far-right in the state of Saxony-Anhalt two weeks ago were a shock, the results in the elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin have confirmed the deep crisis in which the traditional right-wing party finds itself. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, for the first time, it has been left out of a state Parliament and in Berlin Die Linke (The Left) has beaten them.

The triumph, for the first time, of the post-communists on this Sunday's election night in the city-state of Berlin, has a name: Elif Eralp, the candidate for Die Linke, who has come to lead the institutional progressive political space in the German capital. For the first time since reunification, this party has obtained more support than the Social Democrats, who remain last in the distribution of seats. Die Linke has also surpassed the Greens. This triumph contrasts with the global rise of the far right.

Germany's Grand Coalition is left shaken after this weekend's elections in the states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin. Both the CDU and the SPD have suffered significant electoral setbacks in elections that leave two clear winners: the far right and the post-communist left. In Mecklenburg, Alternative for Germany has overtaken the Social Democrats, who have been governing since 2017 and with whom the far right was neck-and-neck in the polls. Nevertheless, the Social Democratic candidate Manuela Schwesig will be able to continue governing as the far right has no way of obtaining a majority. The German Chancellor's party, on the other hand, has obtained its worst result in history in this state and, as of now, would remain out of the regional parliament, aggravating the internal crisis in the party. In Berlin, the CDU has been unseated by The Left (Die Linke), which wins an election for the first time with one in every four votes.

Still in shock from the far-right victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt two weeks ago, Germany is taking the temperature of the ultra-wave this Sunday in the elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and also in Berlin. The far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) is looking to leverage the momentum of the victory in Saxony-Anhalt to try and repeat it in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the second eastern state to head to the polls. And it could succeed, although far from an absolute majority and with few options to govern. Polls give the AfD 37% of the votes, followed very closely by the Social Democrats, currently in government, with 35%.

It is no coincidence that one of the protagonists of the election campaign in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt has been an old acquaintance for the citizens: the old Simson motorcycle, associated with the daily life of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). The motorcycle, painted blue, the color of Alternative for Germany (AfD), is the vehicle with which the leader of the far-right party Ulrich Siegmund has ridden through election events in which, even, members of the AfD have sung the anthem of the GDR.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has raised his tone against the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) with accusations of wanting to implement migration policies that amount to "ethnic cleansing" in Germany. Merz addressed the ultra-right party in this way during a debate in the Bundestag, the German parliament, regarding the 2027 budget, three days after the AfD's victory in the Saxony-Anhalt elections. The German chamber thus became the stage for the first clash between Merz and the far-right party leader, Alice Weidel, following the overwhelming triumph of the ultra-right in the small state in the east of the country and the collapse of the CDU, Merz's party.

For the first time since the defeat of Nazism, the AfD, the far right, could govern a state in federal Germany. In other words, the taboo of Nazism is collapsing overwhelmingly: with 44% of the vote and 39 seats, while the CDU goes from 40 deputies to 16. The humiliation of the German Christian Democrats is so resounding that submitting to the adversary would be a definitive surrender in the current times, with the risk of being absorbed. And paradoxes of history, everything will depend on the BSW, an eccentric and marginal left-wing party opposed to immigration, willing not to contribute to blocking the far right. A gesture that would not cease to be indicative: a left-wing party would join the growing trend on the European right of giving recognition to neo-fascism. That is to say, the reactionary impulse crosses borders: it has already swept enough on the right, now it only remains for the left to join in. In any case, whatever happens, one thing is certain: the taboo of Nazism, which had been established in the postwar period, is dissolving in Germany, which would thus join the shift towards the far right like almost all of Europe.

The elections in Saxony-Anhalt, a small state in eastern Germany, have managed to exceptionally shake up politics across the entire country. A detailed analysis of the result allows for an X-ray of the profile of voters for Alternative for Germany (AfD), which took 43.8% of the total votes, double that of the 2021 elections. We review the keys to a historic election day that could mark the path for the upcoming elections in Germany.

With a historic result of 44% of the vote, the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has fallen just three seats short of an absolute majority in the parliament of the state of Saxony-Anhalt. The party, founded in 2013 during the height of the euro crisis, will not be able to govern alone as it wanted, and most parties have committed to the policy of a 'cordon sanitaire' to block its path. But the game of alliances with a small group that has managed to enter parliament still gives it the possibility of accessing power in a federal state for the first time since Nazism.

The historic victory of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the state of Saxony-Anhalt is a political earthquake for a country trapped in existential angst. German exceptionalism is more earthly than ever. The country's economy has had six consecutive years of meager growth. The traditionally powerful industry is frightened and is demanding more protection against China and United States tariffs. The shocks of energy prices and the announced crisis in the automotive sector –now aggravated by the announcement of mass layoffs at Volkswagen– fuel a feeling of an end of an era that makes the European Union tremble.

The victory of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt has shaken Europe, with the far-right having real options to gain power in a state for the first time since the fall of Nazism. The overwhelming ultra victory has arrived in the state of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), with economic and social indicators below those of West Germany more than 30 years after reunification. Germany is also not going through its best economic moment, with an engine that has lost power and a federal government that is trying to revive it through rearmament. We talk about the causes of the ultra victory with Steven Forti, professor of contemporary history at the UAB and expert in the far-right.