The leader of the centre-right opposition CDU party in Germany, Friedrich Merz has defended once again his recent move to side with the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in pushing through a motion aimed at curbing illegal migration, but said he would never enter into a coalition with the party.
Merz was speaking in his first direct TV debate with Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday, February 9th, ahead of the parliamentary elections on February 23rd.
Scholz accused him of breaking his promise never to cooperate with the AfD and tearing down the cordon sanitaire surrounding the party. In response, Merz said he had been driven to act quickly and had to accept the votes of the AfD to pass the anti-immigration motion after the murder of a two-year-old by an Afghan failed asylum seeker in the city of Aschaffenburg.
“I could no longer justify it with my conscience,” Merz said, but added that he would not cooperate or govern with the AfD, because “there is no common ground, we are worlds apart on the issues concerning Europe, NATO, the euro, Russia, America.”
Migration has become one of the hot topics of the election campaign followed by a spate of knife crimes committed last year by migrants, and years of pro-migration policies by both the current leftist government, as well as the one spearheaded by the former CDU leader and chancellor Angela Merkel.
The CDU is currently leading the polls with 29%, with the AfD in second place with 22%. Merz is hoping that his hard anti-immigration rhetoric will lure voters away from the AfD which has for many years strived for illegal migrants to be turned back at the border, and for criminals and rejected asylum seekers to be deported.
Scholz, whose Social Democrats are trailing behind both CDU and AfD at only 16%, listed measures made by his coalition government to control irregular migration, but Merz dismissed what the CDU leader described as progress on that front as “wishful thinking” and “living in a different world.”The CDU leader did add, however, that the number of deportations was still too low compared with the number of people illegally entering the country:
We still have as many immigrants in four days as are deported in a month. In the three years of your term in office, we have had well over two million irregular migrants in Germany. That’s more than the inhabitants of the city of Hamburg.
Merz criticised the chancellor’s record on the economy, too, which is in its third year of a recession. He noted that there are three million unemployed in Germany, 50,000 companies have gone bankrupt in the past three years, and the country’s industry has lost 300,000 jobs.
Merz reminded that the shutting down of Germany’s three remaining nuclear power plants would contribute to the slow economy and deindustrialization, saying:
Why in God’s name are you shutting down three functioning, clean-running nuclear power plants in the middle of an energy crisis?
Scholz, on the other hand, pointed out that the decision to decommission all of the country’s seventeen reactors was initially made by the Merkel government more than a decade ago.
The two party leaders also spoke on the subject of the war in Ukraine, and, in what is a clear change of heart compared to previous rhetoric, voiced hope for peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, which could be given a new impetus following Donald Trump’s return as U.S. president.
It is worth recalling that the Social Democrat chancellor had initially been wary of aiding Ukraine militarily, and was willing to send helmets only, but pressure from NATO allies and the hawkish Greens within the government eventually persuaded Scholz to allow the delivery of anti-aircraft systems and battle tanks. As opposed to that, Merz has taken a much hawkish stance, and previously said he would provide Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles if he wins the upcoming elections.
The debate on Sunday was also noteworthy for the fact that it pitted the first and third most popular choices for chancellor while denying a platform for AfD’s Alice Weidel despite surging at 22% in polls.
The show was hosted by the publicly funded state broadcaster, which should be politically unbiased and neutral, yet it seems Weidel still does not have a place there. Following the debate, Alice Weidel said it was clear that Merz would try to form a coalition with either the Social Democrats or the Greens following the elections, meaning there will be no change in the migration and economic policies of Germany.
