A single state election result put a number on Germany’s anxiety — 44 percent — but says former European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering, the real story is what comes next. In this episode of The Greater Loop, host Maryanne Maldonado sits down with Pöttering, who led the European Parliament from 2007 to 2009 and spent four decades at the center of European politics, to unpack the AfD’s rise in Saxony-Anhalt, what’s driving support for the party in the former East, and why he insists the numbers shouldn’t be exaggerated even as he takes the threat seriously. Plus: the fraying trust in the US-Europe relationship, what a stronger AfD could mean for German support of Ukraine, and Pöttering’s case for why nationalism, in the end, always means war.

Hosted by Maryanne Maldonado | The Greater Loop — A podcast of the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston
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What’s Covered

• The AfD’s 44 percent showing in Saxony-Anhalt — and why Pöttering says context matters before conclusions
• Why Eastern Germany’s post-reunification experience shapes AfD support and skepticism toward backing Ukraine
• The erosion of transatlantic trust — from Eisenhower and Dean Rusk to today’s tensions
• What an AfD role at the federal level could mean for the EU and the euro
• A tour of Europe’s right-wing landscape: Meloni’s Italy, Orbán’s Hungary, and the shifting French right
• Germany’s energy dependence on Russia and the case for closer US-German cooperation on LNG
• The unfinished project of European integration — and the European Parliament’s growing power under the Treaty of Lisbon
• Pöttering’s closing message to Americans: support freedom in Europe, and be wary of nationalism’s costs