The reactions of the Baltic and Scandinavian countries to the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt have three main aspects: Firstly, many people find it difficult to distinguish which elections actually took place - most people do not know that Germany has a federal structure and that this time elections were only held for a specific federal state. So there is a lot of confusion about how important this election actually was.
Second: Almost all of these countries have already gone through a similar process - right-wing extremist forces came to power through elections, in Finland in 2015 and in Estonia in 2019. As they took over government responsibility, the parties' ideology quickly diluted. The world could not be changed as easily as previously promised. As a result, cracks appeared in the parties: almost all of the groups mentioned have now broken down into several parts like the plot of a soap opera.
The third and most important aspect, however, is the question of the AfD's financing model and its proximity to Vladimir Putin. Almost all critical voices emphasize that Putin's influence on Germany's domestic and foreign policy will increase. This, in turn, could weaken material and moral support for Ukraine, which is alarming for the Baltic states and the 1,300 kilometer long Finnish-Russian border.
Almost all Finnish and Estonian media paid attention to the election results, but much more cautiously than expected and than in Germany itself. One gets the impression that the Germans are much more shocked by the election results than their Nordic neighbors. The morning program of MTV3, one of the most watched Finnish television channels, devoted 15 minutes to the elections. News director and former Berlin correspondent Ilkka Ahtiainen was there. He emphasized that nothing surprising had happened; this development had been foreseeable for ten years.
He also highlighted that the claim that it was a right-wing extremist movement was still a matter of debate - the claim that the Nazis had renewed their grasp on power could certainly be refuted. “Germany can no longer ignore the will of the people so clearly expressed in democratic elections and refuse to cooperate with the future AfD government,” were his final words.
Finland's most widely read evening newspaper Ilta-Sanomat - a curious mix of excellent foreign and domestic policy reporting, celebrity news and cooking recipes - conducted a street survey. The Wokeness political activists were upset about the result, but the rest accepted it calmly. Ukrainians expressed “mild concern” that the AfD had direct relations with Russia. The same newspaper headlined instead: “Former Stasi agent wins German election” (meaning Frank-Ronald Bischoff). Finland has its own history with Stasi agents, so the interest that arose was understandable. Estonian politicians react according to their party program. AfD sympathizers are trying to weaken Russian influence and, like Jaak Madison, claim that “the world is not just about Russia.”
The history of the Baltics and Scandinavia in recent decades proved what my good friend, former Estonian interior minister and Soviet-era dissident Lagle Parek, told me: “The problem with taking office is that there are simply no solutions.” When populist parties on the right and left came to power, they faced the same problem as Parek: power must do something, but there are no solutions. This is exactly what has so far mitigated the extreme excesses of the populist parties.
