From Dresden to Valletta: What Malta Must Learn as Germany’s Merz Tackles Far-Right Surge

**Merz’s East German Tour: A Cautionary Tale for Malta’s Own Battle with Extremism**

Friedrich Merz’s whistle-stop tour through Germany’s former communist east this week reads like a political thriller set in a half-finished democracy. The CDU leader is racing to blunt the far-right AfD’s surge before three state elections in September, and every handshake in Saxony feels like a firebreak against a populist wildfire. From a Maltese vantage point, 1,600 kilometres south, the drama is not just foreign spectacle—it is a mirror held up to our own island’s flirtations with hard-right messaging.

Malta’s political bloodstream has always mixed Mediterranean passion with continental pragmatism, but the ingredients are shifting. Walk down Valletta’s Republic Street on any given Saturday and you will hear the same vocabulary that once echoed only in Leipzig’s Augustusplatz: “invasion”, “replacement”, “Christian Europe”. The numbers are still small—Volt Malta and ADPD together poll higher than the fringe nationalist group ABBA—but the AfD’s 18% nationally shows how quickly “fringe” can become “king-maker”. Maltese MEPs returning from Strasbourg quietly admit that the European Conservatives & Reformists group, where Malta’s PN sits, is watching the German numbers with the same dread a Floriana FC defender eyes a Hibs counter-attack.

Merz’s strategy is instructive. Instead of fencing off the east, he is physically present, drinking Köstritzer beer in Erfurt pubs and listening to nurses in Mecklenburg whose wages have been eroded by inflation. The lesson for Malta is spatial: extremism festers in the pockets politicians forget. Germany’s east has lower wages and higher emigration; Malta’s south-east has Żabbar garages converted into overcrowded migrant dormitories and Marsa streets where rubbish collection is a lottery. When Roberta Metsola tours the islands during European Parliament recesses she is greeted like a celebrity in Naxxar coffee shops; when was the last time a party leader held an unscripted Q&A in Marsa’s Triq il-Wied at 9 pm on a weekday?

Culturally, the AfD’s success weaponises Ostalgie—a nostalgia for pre-1989 certainties—while Malta’s hard-right mines a similar vein of “我们过去的黄金时代” (the golden age we once had). The difference is scale, not sentiment. Germany’s east lost 1.7 million people since reunification; Malta lost entire village cores to Airbnb. Both anxieties are real, even if the culprits differ. Merz counters with a message of “freedom plus prosperity”, promising faster internet and cheaper electricity. Malta’s major parties still campaign on fuel vouchers and tax refunds, but the discourse is drifting toward identity. The PN’s recent billboard—“Malta for the Maltese, Europe for the Europeans”—would have been unthinkable a decade ago; now it competes for eye-space with Labour’s “Malta first” slogans that could have been copy-pasted from an AfD leaflet.

The community impact is already visible. In Birkirkara, the parish priest last month felt compelled to preach against “racist chatter” after Nigerian migrants were refused communion wine. In Gozo, the carnival float mocking African boat arrivals won second prize; the judges later claimed they “didn’t notice” the racial undertones. These are AfD-style moments in miniature, normalised before our cappuccino cools. Merz’s warning is that once the toothpaste of resentment is out, no amount of economic growth will squeeze it back in. Malta’s GDP may be roaring, but GDP never voted anyone out of office—emotions do.

Conclusion: Malta is not Germany; our extremist party is still a Telegram channel rather than a parliamentary group. Yet the archipelago’s density—political, demographic, digital—means ideas travel at fibre-optic speed. Merz’s east German roadshow is a live demo in political triage: show up early, listen hard, offer tangible hope. Maltese leaders who think a €20 cheque will inoculate voters against the siren song of “Malta first” should book a flight to Dresden, not a photo-op in Castille. The AfD’s rise took ten years; on an island where everyone knows everyone, ten months could be enough. The time to blunt the surge is before it starts, not after the ballots are counted.