Final day of German election campaign
Newshour
BBC
4.4 • 984 Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Economic woes, worries about immigration and the rise of the far right have loomed over the campaign ahead of Sunday's election in Germany. We hear the latest from our team on the ground in Berlin.
Also in the programme: President Trump fires the United States' highest-ranking military officer; and the Vatican says Pope Francis is in a critical condition after a week in hospital.
(Photo: German Chancellor Scholz holds final rally ahead of general election, in Potsdam. Credit: REUTERS/Liesa Johannssen)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service coming live from London. This is Owen Bennett-Jones. |
| 0:08.6 | Now, the German elections are on tomorrow and with the growing rift. Between the United States and Europe, |
| 0:14.9 | they are taking on ever more importance. That's the international side of it. Domestically, the German economy remains in |
| 0:23.0 | recession and migration has been a huge issue in the campaign and to bring it all together for us. |
| 0:29.0 | News hours. James Kumisami joins us live now from Berlin. James. Yeah, thanks. And it does feel like |
| 0:34.4 | a big moment. Almost exactly three years after the outgoing Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Schultz declared a turning point in Germany's foreign and defense policy after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. |
| 0:45.9 | Germany could be on the verge of a political turning point. |
| 0:49.1 | Opinion polls suggest that the AFT are still relatively new far-right party, still considered beyond the pale by Germany's |
| 0:55.5 | political centre, could be on course to win around a fifth of the vote more than ever before, |
| 1:00.2 | and to strain as never before the so-called firewall that's kept it out of power nationally. |
| 1:05.6 | All that moribund economy you mentioned, those strains over migration policy |
| 1:09.9 | underlined by recent attacks |
| 1:11.7 | by migrants and asylum seekers, including one just yesterday evening here in this city, have boosted |
| 1:16.5 | a party which promises to control borders, even to carry out mass deportations, and which |
| 1:21.2 | casts itself as an alternative for Germans who feel ignored by the political mainstream. |
| 1:26.3 | That said, it is a mainstream party, |
| 1:28.4 | the Christian Democrats or CDU, that leads in the polls. It's candidate Friedrich Meertz, |
| 1:33.1 | tip to lead the next government. But here in the eastern part of Germany, the electoral map |
| 1:36.7 | is certain to feature large swathes of AFD Blue. And to get a flavour of opinion, a sense of the |
| 1:42.4 | historical moment, I travelled about an hour |
| 1:44.6 | out of Berlin to the town of Strausburg in Brandenburg State. My guide there, the British |
| 1:49.6 | German historian Katja Hoyer, who grow up in the town in the twilight years of communist East |
... |
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