Merz Bids to Seal German Win With New Hard Line on Migration
(Bloomberg) -- Friedrich Merz’s hard-line shift on migration is a calculated gambit by the German conservative leader to neutralize the far right and deliver a breakthrough with wavering voters, according to people familiar with his thinking.
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Most party leaders and members of his CDU/CSU parliamentary caucus are going along with the strategy and there’s a consensus in the ranks that there’s no turning back, despite a growing backlash, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal party matters.
Merz, the frontrunner in the campaign for next month’s snap election, has gone out on a limb this week by trying to ram tougher immigration rules through parliament, even if it means accepting the backing of the anti—immigrant Alternative for Germany.
That’s prompted accusations he’s compromised a firewall erected by mainstream parties to keep the AfD away from power. Merz says his hand was forced by a number of recent fatal attacks in Germany carried out by migrants.
With just over three weeks until the Feb. 23 vote, his CDU/CSU bloc leads the second-placed AfD by around 10 percentage points in most polls, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats trailing in third, just ahead of the Greens.
Merz, who argues he can’t be prevented from attempting action on domestic security just because the AfD will back his plans, is set to take his push to the next level on Friday.
He told supporters at a campaign rally in Dresden on Thursday evening that he’s still planning to put a bill dubbed the “influx-limiting law” to a vote in the Bundestag.
It includes measures designed to reduce irregular immigration from countries outside the European Union and cut the number of family members following asylum seekers to Germany, and would give police enhanced powers to carry out deportations.
“I would like to ensure that my party’s policies are corrected so that the AfD is no longer needed,” Merz said, reiterating his wish that Scholz’s SPD and the Greens join the CDU/CSU in backing the bill.
“Until the end, I will not give up hope that the Social Democrats will find the strength to agree to our proposal,” Merz said. “Then the country can be at peace and we can take move forward together.”
The event in the Saxony capital — which was delayed by demonstrators outside protesting against Merz’s policies — was his first appearance in public since Wednesday’s controversial Bundestag vote, when he relied on the AfD to secure approval for a non—binding motion urging Scholz’s government to take action on migration.
That was the first time since World War II a German mainstream party had relied on far-right forces to get a parliamentary majority and triggered a chorus of outrage that has jolted the election campaign.
Merz is going ahead with Friday’s vote even though it almost certainly won’t get enough support in the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament where the 16 federal states are represented.
Kai Wegner, the CDU mayor of Berlin, said Thursday he would “never approve a law in the Bundesrat that was only passed depending on the votes of the AfD.”
“With me, you can rely on it, there will never be any collaboration, cooperation or even a coalition with the right-wing extremists from the AfD,” Wegner added.
Former CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel joined the criticism of Merz with a rare intervention into domestic politics earlier Thursday, saying in an open letter that his strategy to get the motion approved was “wrong.”
In a sign of further internal conservative discontent, one party official, who asked not to be identified, said that while Merkel’s letter will likely inflict significant damage on the CDU’s electoral chances, it was still justified.
Merz wants to sharply turn the party away from Merkel’s middle-of-the-road approach and shift the CDU further to the right, a strategy which the former chancellor believes is misguided and against the party’s principles, the official said.
Support for the AfD is about twice as high in Germany’s former communist eastern states as in the western regions and the party narrowly failed to win the election in Saxony in September last year, coming second behind the CDU.
Dresden was also where, in 2015, anti-immigrant protesters angry with Merkel’s policies infamously called for her to step down as chancellor while brandishing model gallows with her name on.
(Updates with Merz comments starting in seventh paragraph.)
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