Europeans like to tout their commitment to democracy, but when it comes time to talk tachles, as Vice President Vance has lamented, they seem all too content to ignore the will of the voters — at least when those voters fall on the political right. Feature the governing coalition forming at Berlin. Though voters gave rightist parties a majority, Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democrats are teaming up with the Social Democratic Party, or SPD, to their left.

This is not to dismiss out of hand Herr Merz’s reasons for shunning the rightist Alternative for Germany party — AfD for short — as a partner in government, despite the logic of a coalition of the right. Voters are uneasy with the AfD, in part because, unlike Prime Minister Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, the party has been seen as either unwilling or unable fully to purge its ranks of elements who have failed to, say, fully renounce Germany’s dark legacy of Nazism. 

This failure by the AfD is a missed opportunity for the party, which, despite its unsavory reputation, attained second place in the elections in February, and is now polling as Germany’s most popular party. In a larger sense, too, Herr Merz’s left-right coalition reflects policy compromises that, to some extent, vindicate the gripe by the AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel that voters “want real political change, and not a ‘business as usual’ coalition.”

The compromises required by a left-right coalition suggest halting progress at a time when Germany could use swift progress on a conservative reform agenda. Consider, say, the call among some Christian Democrats to revive military conscription, dropped in 2011. That would signal to Russia and the West that Germany is taking seriously its security obligations. The idea was nixed due to SPD opposition.

What’s left in the new coalition roadmap is a vague pledge to overhaul defense procurement. A worthy goal, to be sure, yet far from a bold call to action. While Herr Merz, in response to the wave of migration that has hit the nation, is vowing to “effectively put an end to irregular immigration,” the SPD is insisting on a compromise stating that the “basic right to asylum remains inviolable” and that “Germany is a country of immigration.”

In another sop to the SPD, the coalition terms vow to raise the nation’s minimum wage to 15 euros an hour, hardly constructive  when global economic competition is putting pressure on labor costs. Herr Merz, too, had to “water down,” the Guardian reports, other campaign pledges like “strict fiscal discipline” and “major tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals,” to win the support of the noble comrades in the Social Democratic Party. 

With the coalition still pending — a vote by the SPD’s members is required to ratify the pact — the AfD has not been idle. The rightist party in late March dissolved its youth wing, the “Young Alternative,” as part of what Politico describes as an effort to “broaden its appeal among German voters.” The youth wing had faced a possible ban after the nation’s intelligence service in 2023 designated the “Young Alternative” a “right-wing extremist group.”

If closing the AfD’s youth wing is a “tactical maneuver,” as Politico reports, the shutdown also marks the need to “destigmatize the party.” That could prove a positive step, if only a step, toward moving the party toward being a logical participant in Germany’s democratic process. The depth of Germany’s dilemma is shown by the fact that even as critics argue for an outright ban of the AfD, the party is currently the country’s most popular, per an Ipsos poll. 

That survey finds the AfD earning the support of 25 percent of Germans, surpassing, by a point, Herr Merz’s party in popularity. The SPD has fallen to 15 percent. Ms. Weidel crows that the poll augurs “political change will come.” We are reminded of 1929 when the centrist chancellor, Gustav Stresemann, warned his party: “We must work with the left, because parts of the right have gone mad.” It was a noble thought but failed to avert catastrophe.