The Republicans (Germany)

The Republicans (Germany)

The Republicans (German: Die Republikaner, REP) is a national conservative political party in Germany. The primary plank of the program is opposition to immigration. The party tends to attract protest voters who think that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU) are not sufficiently conservative. It was founded in 1983 by former CSU members Franz Handlos and Ekkehard Voigt, and Franz Schönhuber was the party's leader from 1985 to 1994. The party has since been led by Rolf Schlierer. The Republicans had seats in the European Parliament in the 1980s, and in the parliament of the German state of Baden-Württemberg until 2001.

The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution started observing the party in 1992 and categorized it as a "party with partially extreme-right tendencies," but has since 2006 stopped monitoring the party. The avowedly extreme-right party National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) and the far-right German People's Union (DVU), both of which are more successful than the Republicans, have offered the Republicans a chance to join their electoral alliance, but the REP leaders refused any cooperation with any openly extreme-right parties. For years and especially under Schlierer's leadership, the party has lost far-right members to the DVU and NPD. The strongholds for the Republicans also differ from those of the more radical right-wing parties, with the former being strongest in the relatively affluent South Germany whilst the latter have had most success in the more economically depressed Eastern Germany.

In the 2009 federal elections, the Republicans received 0.4 percent of the total national vote. Its strongest showing was in the states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg, in which it received 1.1 percent of the vote.