The man favored to be Germany’s next chancellor has opened the door to working with Alternative for Germany to adopt tough new immigration restrictions, potentially undermining a long-standing effort to avoid a party whose flirtation with Nazi language has made it anathema to the political mainstream. .
The opening by Friedrich Merz, the leader of the center-right Christian Democrats, who is leading in the polls for next month’s chancellor election, came after a knife attack in Bavaria last week by a mentally ill Afghan immigrant killed two people, including a toddler.
The attack, the latest in a series of high-profile killings by immigrants, has since overturned Germany’s presidential election, due to be held on February 23, and refocused an earlier economic-themed campaign on the contentious issue of migration.
Mr. Merz is trying to show voters that he and his party are serious about tightening Germany’s borders and subsequently deporting migrants who the authorities have decided should leave the country.
But until now, all parties at the national level have built what is colloquially known as a “firewall” around the AfD, hoping to blunt the party’s move into the mainstream.
The AfD is currently second in the polls ahead of the election, comfortably ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, though well behind Mr Merz’s Christian Democrats.
Concerns about migration have grown in Germany, where millions of refugees and other migrants, mostly from Syria and Ukraine, have arrived in the past decade. The AfD has made promises of violent border crackdowns and the deportation of some migrants the centerpiece of its pitch to voters.
Other parties, including the CDU and the Social Democrats, have promised new migration restrictions, especially after a Syrian immigrant killed three people last summer. stabbing attack in the city of Solingen.
But until last week, these mainstream parties campaigned more on promised fixes to Germany’s stagnant economy than on migration policy. The Bavarian attacks changed this scenario.
In recent days, Mr Merz has been pushing to force a vote in parliament on migration legislation. The plan would bring permanent border patrols, prevent anyone from entering the country without legal documents, and detain all migrants ordered to leave the country.
The legislation could hand the power of the AfD votes, create a partnership long considered taboo by mainstream German political parties, and draw sharp criticism from other mainstream political leaders.
“Friedrich Merz is willing to make common cause with the AfD,” said Lars Klingbeil, co-chairman of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party. Rheinische Postregional daily. “This abandons the former principles of the CDU when dealing with the AfD, splits the democratic center of our country and alienates our European partners,” he added.
Mr Merz defended his plan to support the restrictions.
“What is fundamentally right is not made wrong by the wrong people voting for it,” he said Monday.
A 28-year-old Afghan immigrant, identified by German media as Enamullah O., attacked and killed a two-year-old Moroccan boy with a large kitchen knife. The boy and his friends, as well as their guardians, were on a pre-school trip to a park in Aschaffenburg, a picturesque town in the state of Bavaria near Frankfurt. A bystander who tried to stop the attacker was also killed. One of the teachers and a 61-year-old man were injured.
The man suspected in the attack, who lived in a nearby shelter, was taken to a locked psychiatric unit, authorities said.
The seemingly random killings galvanized the country in a manner similar to other attacks last year. Last May, a refugee from Afghanistan attacked a far-right demonstration, wounding five and killing a police officer. In December, a man who immigrated from Saudi Arabia decades ago drove into a Christmas market, killing 5 and injuring hundreds.
In response, some officials urged caution. Jürgen Herzing, the mayor of Aschaffenburg, a city of nearly 80,000 people, warned that despite “parallels” to other recent attacks, people should refrain from acts of revenge.
“We cannot and must not blame an entire population group for the actions of an individual,” Herzing said.
But political leaders were quick to call for action, especially those with the AfD.
“The knife murders in Aschaffenburg must lead to a change in asylum policy: dangerous asylum seekers are to be deported,” Tino Chrupalla, one of the AfD’s two party leaders, wrote in a social media post just hours after the news broke.
Mr Scholz issued a statement calling the killing an “incomprehensible act of terror”. But he stopped short of visiting the crime scene, as he did after other similar attacks.
The version of the bill that Mr Merz is expected to bring to parliament includes a paragraph criticizing the AfD for using problems linked to “massive illegal migration” to promote xenophobia.
But despite earlier assurances that his Christian Democratic Party would never rely on the AfD under his watch, Mr Merz did not rule out doing so in this case.
“I don’t look right or left. I’m just looking straight ahead at these questions,” he said last week.
The AfD celebrated Mr Merz’s statement and suggested the legislation was little more than a carbon copy of what the AfD demanded.
“The firewall is down! The CDU and the CSU accepted my offer to vote together with the AfD in the Bundestag on the fundamental issue of migration,” Weidelová wrote. contribution to X.
“This is good news for our country!” she added.
