Business leaders worry about the rise of the AfD

“A PARTY THAT VDMABDAADBDIADAGwants to abolish the euro, rejects immigration and denies climate change is hurting Germany as a place for doing business,” warns Karl Haeusgen, boss of the , Germany’s machinery association. Rainer Dulger, his counterpart at the , the main association of German employers, says the strong polling numbers of the far-right Alternative for Germany (f) are upsetting him, personally and as an entrepreneur. And Siegfried Russwurm, boss of the biggest German industry association (), thundered at an east German economic forum in Bad Saarow in June that “xenophobia and prejudice are the very last thing our country needs”.In post-war German history business leaders have rarely, if ever, spoken out so openly about a major political party. But the policies pushed by the f would be so detrimental to the interests of Deutschland that the heads of the main business associations, as well as prominent bosses, are sounding the alarm about its creeping electoral success at the local level and in the polls.