Ahead of next week's European Parliament elections, German industry and trade unions have warned of a negative impact on the country and its economy if the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) prevails in the polls.
"There is a real danger that the enemies of democracy will make further gains," the head of the Federation of German Industries, Siegfried Russwurm, said in remarks published on Saturday by the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) group of media outlets.
The European elections would determine whether Germany wants to continue its successful development in an open Europe or whether it wants to seal itself off, said Russwurm.
"This is not a question of taste. Germany would be in a much worse economic position without the EU. We can prove this with hard facts," the industry leader said.
Separately, the head of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), Yasmin Fahimi, told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that racism and marginalization had already become deeply ingrained in the self-image and everyday lives of far too many people.
This made it all the more important to make it clear what the AfD stands for: "It wants a Europe of markets and not of employees. It doesn't want a minimum wage, but more profit. It does not want greater collective bargaining coverage, but arbitrary pay," warned Fahimi.
"An AfD success would mean that we would fall into a very deep recession, that we would lose billions in gross national product and up to 2.5 million jobs in one fell swoop," she added.
According to a recent survey conducted for the public broadcaster ARD, the AfD stands to garner some 14% of German votes in the June 6-9 election of a new European Union legislature.
Voting begins in the Netherlands on Thursday and takes place across most of the 27-country bloc, including Germany, next Sunday.
Amid deep dissatisfaction with the current ruling coalition under Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Germany's conservative Christian Democrats and their Bavarian counterparts, the Christian Social Union, would net 29% of the votes if the polls were held this Sunday.
Support for Scholz's centre-left Social Democrats would be at 15%, while its coalition partner the Greens would - like the AfD - net around 14% and the third party in government, the Free Democrats, would get 4% according to the survey.