It is labelled “radical”, “racist” and “anti-democratic” by opponents. Germany’s domestic intelligence service says the party is “anti-constitutional”.

But if polls are right, the AfD will become Germany’s second largest political force after elections this Sunday.

That would be a huge shift in tectonic plates, not just at home but across Europe.

Why is the AfD such a big deal, you might ask? Parties on the populist right have grown in support across much of Europe.

The AfD points to Donald Trump as well. They share his “anti-woke”, tough-on-migration, pro-fossil-fuel message. They too are keen to stop sending weapons to Ukraine, and to de-escalate tensions with Russia.

The Trump administration supports them right back – publicly, to the outrage of many Germans.

The thing is, Germany isn’t just any other country.

It is Europe’s largest economy, one of its most influential nations. It still carries the weight of its Nazi past. Alongside the UK and France, it’s one of the Big Three that helped shape and secure Europe’s liberal order and defence structures following both World War Two and the Cold War.

Never before in post-war Germany has a hard-right party been so successful, while on the cusp of being identified as a threat to the Federal Republic and its liberal constitution.

France’s influential opposition leader, Marine Le Pen, whose party is also considered far-right, has distanced herself from the AfD on the European stage, apparently judging its positions and ethno-nationalist reputation too radical.

The long-held assumption among the mainstream at home and abroad had been that Germany’s dark past immunised it against any serious flirtations with the extreme right.

But there’s a lot about this election that’s making observers shift their view of Germany. And I will come back to the AfD, which vigorously denies its “extremist” label.

Germans have suffered a kick in the gut – in terms of self-image and their country’s international reputation.

For years, they got used to being admired – and envied – as the economic powerhouse of Europe.

Vorsprung durch technik, roughly translating as “progress through technology”, was an advertising slogan for Audi cars in the 1980s. For decades it encapsulated Germany’s reputation in the international imagination.

The country was seen as modern, dynamic and technologically advanced. And the automobile industry was one of the main arteries pumping wealth into Germany’s economic heart.

But fundamental flaws have now been exposed in the German economic model.

It is widely viewed as kaputt (broken) – relying too heavily on energy-intensive, old-fashioned industries like combustion-engine cars and the chemical industry.

Critics question Germany’s lack of foresight, or ability to move with the times. Where was the serious investment in R&D? In big tech? In AI?

To make matters worse, during Angela Merkel’s 16 years as chancellor – she stepped down in 2021 – Germany became increasingly dependent on:

• exports to China
• cheap gas from Russia
• a US defence umbrella.

All of this left Germany very exposed.

Donald Trump now says Europe can no longer rely on US security support and guarantees.

China has made rapid advances in the automobile industry and dominates electric car technology. So far less need for German imports.

And Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine left Germany scrambling for alternative energy sources. Buying liquid natural gas, from the US and others, is expensive, leading to financial strain on many energy-intensive German businesses.

The result: Germany’s economy is sluggish and sticky. As the biggest member of the eurozone currency, that has an impact way beyond its borders. European allies are frustrated.

Germany’s military is also a source of irritation (that’s putting it politely) among European neighbours. Berlin is a key power in the defence alliance, Nato. Donald Trump’s return to the White House means Europeans need to provide more of their own capabilities.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged a zeitenwende – a turning point – for his country’s depleted military, after Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Yet Germany’s military remains in a debilitated state – less battle-ready, we are told, than three years ago.

Partly due to its donations to Ukraine.

Germany, after the US, has been the biggest donor of military aid to Ukraine and most political parties in Germany are in favour of continuing to support Kyiv.

The AfD takes a very different stance. “Peace” is one of the most frequent signs you see at their rallies.

They want a rapprochement with Russia, to immediately stop sending weapons to Ukraine, and to use resources instead to build up Germany’s armed forces for protection at home.

More than 4,000 bridges in Germany are broken or in a dubious state. I could hardly believe my ears when I first heard that. But it is the reported figure in a country whose infrastructure has been quietly crumbling for years due to chronic under-investment – both public and private.

Train punctuality in Germany is appalling – worse than in the UK, which will astound weary British commuters.

Digitisation is lamentable too. Mobile phone reception is patchy outside cities and people are still known to use faxes!

But even if recent German governments had wanted to invest more, they faced legal limits on spending.

A debt brake was written into the German constitution following the financial crisis of 2008/9, with a constraint on new debt of no more than 0.35% of GDP, except in times of national emergency.

Germans didn’t trust their politicians any more.

They had seen government spending spiral at home and abroad. The euro currency, which Germany depends on, almost collapsed.

But what seemed to voters an anchor of financial stability then, now appears to many, a block to economic growth.

Rows about reforming the debt brake were the final straw leading to the collapse of Germany’s outgoing coalition, and the snap election this Sunday.

But, new German government beware: breaking the debt brake will be no mean feat. You need a two-thirds majority in parliament to change the German constitution.

Migration is a huge issue in Germany. And a big vote winner for the AfD.

It is far from the only country worrying about migration levels in Europe, but Germany alone took in over a million asylum seekers, mainly from Syria and Afghanistan, during Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015/16.

The country has also opened its doors to 1.2 million Ukrainian refugees.

Many Germans were proud of what they called their “welcome culture”.

But a spate of attacks by asylum seekers from the Middle East and Afghanistan has re-ignited a debate about how open Germany’s borders should be.

There have been stabbings, a machete assault, a car ramming into civilians at a Christmas market and again at a recent trade union demonstration in Munich, where yet another small child was killed.

The AfD insists it is not racist or anti-migration, and that anyone is welcome in Germany if they arrive by legal means, get a job, contribute to society and respect local norms and culture.

The party says it would immediately deport all immigrants who commit a crime, and anyone who arrives here illegally.

That stance was applauded by numerous AfD supporters I spoke to at rallies in the lead-up to Sunday’s election – including young women who told me they no longer felt safe on the streets.

It’s also worth noting that in May, a German court found that “at least a significant part of the AfD” believed that anyone with a migrant heritage was not “properly German” – even if they held German citizenship.

It concluded that the AfD aimed to “grant German citizens with a migration background only a legally devalued status”. This goes against the German constitution.

Worried they could lose voters to the AfD over the question of migration and borders, Germany’s centre left and centre right have moved to the right in their rhetoric. This is a victory for the AfD, whatever the outcome of the election.

Even if it becomes the second largest force in parliament, as predicted, it is very, very unlikely to make it into Germany’s next government.

The post-World War Two political system in Germany is designed so that no single party can dominate parliament as the Nazis did after they were first voted in, in 1933.

Coalition-building is the name of the game. And there has been a so-called firewall in place since the end of World War Two – a cross-party consensus to keep the extreme right out of government.

The AfD insists it is conservative and libertarian, not a radical, right-wing force.

It points to its growing support base, in west as well as east Germany and among younger voters too. It accuses opponents of trying to shut it up, shut it down and keep it out of power. That, it says, is anti-democratic.

Elon Musk grabbed headlines Europe-wide when he proclaimed in December that only the AfD can save Germany.

The majority here still insists their country needs to be saved from AfD.

Controlling immigration and reviving the European Union’s biggest economy are the main issues in this snap election, triggered by the collapse of centre-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition late last year.

We assess who and what you need to know ahead of the vote for Germany’s next parliament, the Bundestag.

Europe’s biggest economy has contracted for two years in a row, hit by high energy prices and stiff Chinese competition. The next government will need to turn that around and revive German industry.

A series of deadly attacks has heightened pressure on the mainstream parties to reform immigration and asylum rules, and boosted support for the far-right Alternative for Germany. Attacks in Mannheim, Solingen, Magdeburg and Aschaffenburg are all in fresh in German minds.

Although no other party is prepared to let Alternative for Germany (AfD) into government, if they come second and attract 20% of the vote, they could double their number of seats in the Bundestag.

Germans aged 18 and over will decide on their next parliament from 08:00-18:00 on 23 February.

There are five candidates for chancellor.

If the biggest party can secure a coalition deal with one or two other parties, the president will usually nominate its leader as chancellor. Then parliament will hold a secret ballot to decide.

The frontrunner in the race to run Germany is Friedrich Merz, whose Christian Democrats (CDU) are up to 10 points ahead in the polls. He was chosen as candidate for chancellor ahead of Markus Söder, the leader of their sister party in Bavaria the Christian Social Union.

Aged 69 and 198cm (6ft 6in) in height, Merz is a plain-talking, pro-business, social conservative who has spent years waiting in the wings.

Eclipsed in the CDU by Angela Merkel in 2002, he eventually left politics, served on the boards of investment banks and took up flying as an amateur pilot.

Merz’s first two bids to win the CDU leadership failed, against Merkel in 2018 and then Armin Laschet who went on to lose the German election in 2021.

Merz then took over the CDU and is running under the slogan “A Germany we can be proud of again”.

He has promised to restrict immigration, cut taxes and slash €50bn in welfare spending in a bid to kickstart Germany’s faltering economy. He has also promised to bolster aid for Ukraine.

But he provoked a furious backlash ahead of the election when he sought to tighten immigration rules by relying on the votes of the far-right AfD, and ultimately failed.

Former CDU chancellor Angela Merkel said he was “wrong” to accept AfD votes and he has faced big protests. But he has won the backing of his party and succeeded in putting the years of his more centrist rival behind him.

Olaf Scholz has already served more than three years as chancellor, at the head of an unpopular coalition that fell apart in a row over loosening Germany’s strict debt rules.

His government struggled from the start, largely because of the effect of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine on Germany’s economy.

Germany became Ukraine’s biggest aid-provider in Europe. Scholz spoke of a Zeitenwende (turning point) in beefing up German defence policy and military spending – but he was accused of acting too slowly or too late.

Many in his own Social Democrat party (SPD) believed he should have allowed party colleague Boris Pistorius to run for chancellor instead.

However, the party has joined conservatives in the past and although Scholz said he could no longer trust Merz, the Social Democrats remain potential partners.

Alice Weidel, 46, is the AfD first candidate for chancellor since the party was created in 2013.

She has little chance of winning power, but she has become popular with young voters on TikTok and her party has set its sights on four years’ time.

Co-led by Tino Chrupalla, the AfD has already secured one recent victory, in September’s state election in Thuringia in the east.

Weidel enjoys the support of Elon Musk, who said the ex-Goldman Sachs analyst could not be right wing extremist as she “has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka”.

And yet she has backed the mass deportation of migrants, embracing the highly controversial term “remigration”, and she wants to end sanctions on Russia.

Party supporters have cheered her with the slogan Alice für Deutschland (Alice for Germany), which sounds similar to a banned Nazi slogan Alles für Deutschland.

Voting began at 7am local time (06:00 GMT) on Sunday, according to the Central Election Commission, as Kosovars headed to the polling stations to elect a new parliament and cabinet in a contentious race also focused on the economy and corruption.

Polls will remain open until 18:00 GMT – the ninth such vote in Kosovo since the end of the 1998-99 war that pushed Serbian forces out of the self-declared republic.

Sunday’s vote, a key test for Kurti, will elect 120 lawmakers to the assembly, determining who leads Kosovo’s stalled negotiations on normalising ties with Serbia.

Kurti’s  left-wing Vetevendosje, or Self-Determination Movement party, which has sought to dismantle remaining Serbian institutions in Kosovo, is seen as the frontrunner in the election. But the party is not expected to win the necessary majority to govern alone, leaving open the possibility the other two contenders join ranks if he fails to form a cabinet.

The  other contenders are the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), whose main leaders are accused of war crimes at The Hague tribunal, and the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), the republic’s oldest party.

The opposition parties have made big-ticket pledges to increase public salaries and pensions, improve education and healthcare services and fight poverty.

Kosovo, with a population of 1.6 million, is among the poorest in Europe with an annual gross domestic product of less than 6,000 euros ($6,200) per person.

Kurti, whose government is the first in Kosovo’s history to finish its full term in office, has had a turbulent rule, marked by regular unrest between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.

Tensions spiked after negotiations backed by the European Union and the United States between Kosovo and Serbia all but collapsed in March 2023.

In the aftermath, NATO peacekeepers were assaulted by rioting Serbs, a deadly armed standoff in the north sent regional tensions soaring, and an explosion targeting a canal vital to Kosovo’s power plants late last year saw Kurti blaming Belgrade.

Kurti  also drew Western criticism for controversial measures he took last year, such as a ban on using the Serbian dinar and transfers from Serbia to Kosovo’s ethnic Serb minority members who depend on Belgrade’s social services and payments.

The US, the EU and the NATO-led stabilisation force KFOR have urged the government in Pristina to refrain from unilateral actions, fearing the revival of interethnic conflict.

While Kurti retains a strong support base, his opponents have denounced him for the fraying ties with the US and the EU.

Shpend Kursani, a lecturer at the University of Tartu told Al Jazeera that voters most identify Kurti with “anti-corruption, national dignity and being – at least from a Balkan perspective – an honest politician”.

Opposition parties, however, blame Kurti’s willingness to confront Serbia as costing the country support and funding from the international community, even as he was able to secure the sale of anti-tank Javelin missiles from the US, Kursani said.

“It’s the same with Turkey; he purchased drones and what not, so the support from international communities is a bit mixed,” Kursani said. “He’s largely not corrupt… and it’s very difficult [for outside powers] to manage these small country leaders if they are not corrupt.”

KFOR has increased its presence in Kosovo and added more forces for the election. A team of 100 observers from the EU, 18 from the Council of Europe, and about 1,600 others from international or local organisations will also monitor the vote.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won or is leading in 47 seats in the 70-member legislative assembly, while the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is ahead in 23 seats, according to data from the Election Commission of India (EC).

A party that wins more than the halfway mark of 35 seats can form the government.

“Development wins, good governance triumphs,” Modi wrote on X, adding that hisparty would leave “no stone unturned” in developing Delhi .

The election was a battle of prestige for both the BJP and AAP, given Delhi’s symbolic importance as the country’s capital.

The city, a federally-administered territory, was governed by the AAP since 2013, with voters backing its strong record of welfarism. But the party and its leaders have faced several challenges recently, with leaders embroiled in corruption allegations which they have denied.

For the BJP, securing Delhi represents more than just electoral success – it marks a crucial foothold in the nation’s capital after being out of power there since 1998.

The party, which has had recent election successes in other states, such as Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, threw resources at the Delhi campaign, with Modi as well as Home Minister Amit Shah attending events.

Congress, the main opposition party at the national level, was also in the race, but is unlikely to win even one seat.

The party governed Delhi from 1998 to 2013, but was ousted over allegations of corruption that saw voters turn to AAP instead. It has failed to make a mark since.

Experts say that the win in politically crucial Delhi will reinforce Modi’s popularity among Indian voters after his party lost its outright majority in last year’s general election.

The defeat is a big blow to the AAP, a much smaller party which was praised in its early years in power for focusing on improving education and health facilities in the city. It also governs Punjab state, but retaining Delhi would have been a triumph for the beleaguered party which now faces questions about its future.

On Saturday, the biggest upsets for AAP included top leaders Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia losing in the New Delhi and Jangpura constituencies, respectively.

Incumbent Chief Minister Atishi managed only a narrow victory from the Kalkaji constituency.

In a video message on X, Kejriwal said he and his party “humbly accepted” the verdict of the people and congratulated the BJP on its win.

“I hope they live up to the expectations of the people who voted for them,” he said.

More than 60% of eligible voters cast their ballot in the election on Wednesday. Most exit polls had predicted an absolute majority for the BJP, although such predictions have gone wrong in the past.

Much of the BJP campaign targeted Kejriwal, an anti-graft activist, who – along with Sisodia -had been jailed over the past two years in a corruption case relating to a now-scrapped alcohol sales policy. Both leaders, who deny all the charges, separately got bail last year after spending months in jail.

Kejriwal has accused Modi’s party of carrying out a “political vendetta” against him and the AAP, which the BJP denies.

The Supreme Court’s bail conditions banned him from entering the chief minister’s office or signing files. Kejriwal resigned from the role days after his release from prison.

Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have ruled out sharing power with Sinn Féin – the largest opposition party.Sinn Féin won 39 seats.

In a joint statement, Mr Martin and Mr Harris both agreed on the “need for a stable government, underpinned by mutual respect and clear policy direction for the next five years so that it can deliver for the Irish people in face of great challenges”.The two party leaders have now asked their negotiating teams to start talks.Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has already met a number of independent Teachtaí Dála (TDs) in order to gauge their support.Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has said it is “bad practice” for Fianna Fáil to exclude Sinn Féin from potential government formation.

Last week, Fine Gael leader Simon Harris appointed Justice Minister Helen McEntee to be chief negotiator in the talks and said his party is open to speaking with independents.Harris would not be drawn on ministerial positions in a new coalition government.The Irish broadcaster RTÉ is reporting that the leader of Labour Ivana Bacik, which won 11 seats, is to hold separate face-to-face meetings with Martin and Harris next week.The last Irish government was a coalition of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party.The position of taoiseach (prime minister) was rotated between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

Sunday’s vote will elect a new government and prime minister and determine the formation of the country’s legislature comprising the 323-seat lower house and the senate (133 seats). Romanians will elect lawmakers for both chambers on Sunday.

Those who are abroad have been able to vote since Saturday.

The governing coalition of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the National Liberal Party (PNL) is competing to get better of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR).

The PSD and the PNL, which formed an unlikely coalition in 2021, have dominated post-communist politics in Romania – a member of the European Union and NATO.

Georgescu, who is a former member of AUR and was its PM pick before he left in 2022, ran as an independent in the November 24 election, challenging entrenched mainstream parties. He garnered 23 percent of the votes in the first round of the presidential vote.

His unexpected success last Sunday aroused suspicions of interference in the campaign, prompted a vote recount and led to a defeated candidate asking the country’s top court to rerun the first round of voting.

The confusion means the parliamentary election is going ahead with voters uncertain whether the outcome of the presidential first-round vote will stand. They also do not know whether the presidential run-off – scheduled for December 8 between Georgescu and centrist Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union party, or USR – will go ahead or be held at a later date.

The Constitutional Court considered the situation on Friday but decided to put off until Monday a decision on whether to annul the first round.

While the presidential role in Romania has significant decision-making powers in areas such as national security and foreign policy, the prime minister is the head of the nation’s government.

Many observers believe the presidential outcome indicates a sharp shift from Romania’s mainstream parties to more populist anti-establishment parties, whose voices have found fertile ground amid high inflation, high cost of living and a sluggish economy.