2026/09 update

Saxony-Anhalt has apparently decided to cut off the branch it’s sitting on—and then calls it a “political new beginning.”

Anyone who helps strengthen a far-right party shouldn’t be surprised if, at some point, international professionals, female entrepreneurs, scientists, and well-educated immigrants realize that there are more attractive places to live and work. After all, people who want to feel welcome are only so easily swayed by empty rhetoric about the shortage of skilled workers.

While other regions are competing for talent, Saxony-Anhalt may soon find itself primarily occupied with managing the consequences of its own deterrent policies: unfilled positions, a nursing crisis, fewer investments, and a society that wonders why it suddenly lacks the very people it was desperately seeking just yesterday.

The truly bitter part is this: this decline isn’t happening overnight, nor is it a natural disaster. It is a political choice—and therefore also politically accountable.

A state that needs skilled workers but makes exclusion its defining feature is conducting economic policy like a restaurant owner who shows his guests the door and then complains about the empty dining room.

There’s only one thing left to do: The last one out, please turn off the lights.