AfD adopts hardline 'remigration' programs for Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin ahead of September elections
Germany's far-right AfD adopted radical election programs for the September 20 state votes in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern -- approved unanimously by 237 delegates in Grimmen -- and in Berlin, where Kristin Brinker was confirmed as the party's candidate for mayor. Both call for sweeping migration crackdowns, including a dedicated 'border and return police,' deportation drives and a 'remigration agenda,' alongside abolition of state anti-discrimination law, a return to nuclear power and use of the Nord Stream pipelines. The AfD leads polls in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern at 36 percent and runs second in Berlin at 16-18 percent.
The AfD in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern adopted its election program at a party congress in Grimmen, where 237 delegates unanimously approved the paper -- titled a "government program" -- ahead of the September 20 state election. The party leads polls in the state at 36 percent.
The program pairs pledges to strengthen education, security agencies and health care with a sharp turn on energy and migration. It calls for a return to nuclear power, an end to CO2 taxation, use of the Nord Stream pipelines and an end to wind-power expansion, plus abolition of the state's collective-bargaining and procurement law. On migration it demands a dedicated "border and return police" within the state police and a detention facility for deportations, and would cut state funding for what it calls "extremist structures" and "asylum-policy lobby groups," including the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern refugee council. Under a heading "protection of German identity," the program accuses the state government of working to replace a "German-shaped society" with "a multicultural society" -- language echoing the far-right population-exchange narrative -- and uses the contested term "remigration." It also seeks to cancel the NDR and media state treaties in favor of a "basic broadcaster" and to ban rainbow flags outside state authorities.
In Berlin, where a new Abgeordnetenhaus is also elected on September 20, the AfD met in Brandenburg an der Havel to adopt its program and confirm Kristin Brinker, who leads the party's faction in the state parliament, as its candidate for governing mayor. The program centers on housing, immigration, internal security and education. The party blames Berlin's housing shortage on immigration, noting that the share of residents with a migration background rose from 25 to 41 percent in ten years, and would prioritize subsidized housing for long-resident Berliners while halting immigration and pushing deportations; it also lists preserving the city's inner-city allotment gardens as a central concern.
On internal security, the Berlin program demands abolition of the state anti-discrimination law, higher police allowances, a new "district police" and public naming of offenders' countries of origin, along with an immediate intake stop for asylum seekers, a "remigration agenda" and a "state office for immigration, asylum and remigration." It frames organized crime as "imported," describing long-established Arab-Lebanese clan structures now contested by "war-experienced" rivals from Syria, Iraq and Chechnya, and would counter it by deporting criminal clan members through a special unit at the immigration authority. In education, the AfD would refocus schools on reading, writing and arithmetic, anchor a canon of German literature, reintroduce "Heimatkunde" and crafts in primary schools, reject "sexualizing" sex education, and set up "time-out rooms" for disruptive pupils. The AfD polls 16 to 18 percent in Berlin, second behind the CDU.