German far-right chancellor candidate promises to revive Nord Stream pipeline

The newly elected Chancellor candidate for from the far-right populist party Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) has pledged that she would revive the North Stream gas pipeline from Russia should she comes to power. 

Alice Weidel, the Head of the AfD party was nominated over the weekend during the party's Bundesparteitag (deferal conference event) as the fraction's candidate, Caliber.Az reports citing German media outlets.

This unprecedented development comes ahead of the planned February 2025 snap federal elections, following the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's "traffic light" coalition between his Social Democratic party (SPD), Liberals (FDP), and the Green Alliance (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen). It marks the first time that the party, or any right-leaning party, enters the Chancellor race with their own candidate in post-war Germany.  

Established in 2013 in the midst of the Euro-crisis, Germany's only right-leaning party present in the Bundestag declared during the weekend that they would work to make the country "strong, wealthy, and safe again."

Reiterating the party's general outlines, the 45-year-old also pledged to "tear down" wind turbines, reject the green energy policy, reinstate nuclear power plants, and extend the operation of coal plants, while also closing borders to illegal migrants and rejecting gender studies. 

Most of those policies were outlined by Weidel during her recent hour-long conversation with entrepreneur, billionaire and social media mogul Elon Musk, which was watched live on his X platform by millions of viewers. 

The focus of Weidel's speech at the AfD event was based around her promise to tighten migration policy, with a promise to close down the borders within the first 100 days of being in government. There would be "a very clear message to the world": "Germany's borders are shut." Weidel also stated that under AfD participation in government, Germany would exit the EU asylum system and cited the migration-critical governments of Hungary and the Netherlands as models.

Despite those stark claims, German publication NTV finds it unlikely that the AfD will be able to implement these plans, seeing as no other parties are willing to form a coalition with the right-wing party, making her candidacy more of a symbolic gesture.

As Caliber.Az recalls, the Nord Stream pipelines are a pair of natural gas pipelines that run under the Baltic Sea, directly connecting Russia to Germany. These pipelines are owned by a consortium led by Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom together with four other German and European investors. Only Nord Stream 1 was operational as the second pipeline was to be launched just around the time of collapsing relations due to the geopolitical climate. It transported vast amounts of gas to Germany, Europe's industrial powerhouse that highly-depended on the Russian resource. Following the introduction of an avalanche of sanctions against Russia, Berlin was ultimately led to halt the opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which sparked criticism by German industries fearing rising costs. Following acts of sabotage near the operational Nord Stream 1 pipeline in 2022 that damaged the flow, which was already limited from previous amounts, the pipeline was indefinitely shut off by Gazprom for repairs. 

By Nazrin Sadigova