Protesters stage blockade as AfD holds conference before German elections | Germany

Thousands of people have demonstrated against a convention of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as political parties launched their campaigns for the country’s election next month.

A heavy police presence was in place in Riesa – in the eastern state of Saxony, an AfD stronghold – and officers cleared some protesters from the streets. However, the two-day convention started a little more than two hours late as many delegates’ trips to the venue were slowed by blockades.

AfD formally nominated co-leader Alice Weidel as its candidate for chancellor by acclamation. Weidel, who was among those held up, thanked delegates for “defying the left-wing mob and getting here”.

Polls show AfD in second place, with about 20% support, in the run-up to the 23 February elections. However, Weidel, who this week held a live chat on X with the tech billionaire Elon Musk, has no realistic chance of becoming Germany’s leader as other parties refuse to work with AfD.

The conservative opposition Union bloc leads polls on about 30%, and its candidate, Friedrich Merz, is the favourite to become the next chancellor.

The incumbent centre-left chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is hoping for victory, but there has been little sign of significant movement in the polls, which show support for his Social Democrats at between 14% and 17%.

Scholz leads a minority government after his unpopular and rancorous three-party coalition collapsed in November when he fired his finance minister in a dispute over how to revitalise Germany’s stagnant economy. The elections are being held seven months earlier than originally scheduled.

Scholz conceded on Saturday that mistakes were made and said that “maybe I should also have ended the coalition earlier”. But he said it was time to look to the future. “Let’s fight,” he told delegates at a party convention in Berlin, which formally confirmed his nomination as its candidate in a show of hands.

He accused Merz’s Union of having no serious plans to tackle Germany’s problems and said it was making “expensive promises for the absolute top earners” that would “rip a gigantic crater in our budget”.

Scholz, who has made Germany one of the leading weapons suppliers to Ukraine in its war with Russia but refused to send it Taurus long-range cruise missiles, again pledged to maintain his “steadfast and prudent” approach.

And he reiterated his pushback against Donald Trump’s recently expressed designs on Greenland and other territories, saying, without naming the president-elect, that “the principle of the inviolability of borders applies to every country, whether it lies to the east of us or the west; every state must keep to this principle, whether it is a small state or a very big and powerful one”.

Merz said “public finger-pointing from Germany has never made an impression in America, and as a rule has achieved the opposite”.