Cologne New Year's Eve Assaults — Trust Collapses, AfD Surges

Around 1,200 women were sexually assaulted or robbed on New Year's Eve 2015/16, mostly in Cologne and Hamburg, by an estimated 2,000 men, many identified as recent arrivals. Police were criticised for being under-resourced for the scale of the crowd and for a slow, initially minimising public response that was widely read as an attempted cover-up. Within three months the AfD entered its first three state parliaments.

Angela Merkel — CDU/CSU-led Coalitions

In power 2005–2021