Last night, Friedrich Merz, leader of the opposition and the man most likely to become the Germany’s next chancellor, came one step closer to ending freedom of movement into the country. In a tense vote in the Bundestag, Merz and his conservative CDU party managed to pass a motion designed force the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz to tackle illegal migration head on by just three votes. Controversially, they were only able to win it with the help of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party.
Merz’s motion was a political gamble. Designed to drive a wedge between his party and the centre-left SPD and Green parties in particular, Merz’s motion called on the government to reintroduce permanent border controls, block all attempts to enter the country illegally and prioritise the arrest and deportation of those legally required to leave. As had been expected, both the SPD and Green parties refused to endorse the motion, accusing Merz of trying to force changes that would be unconstitutional both in German and EU law.
Had Merz lost the vote, his entire federal election campaign was at risk of collapsing
The AfD, on the other hand, were delighted – and pledged their full support to the vote. This opened Merz up to furious accusations from his opponents of having breached the ‘Brandmauer’ or firewall against the AfD, the pact made by Germany’s established parties not to collaborate with the far-right party or table any motions in parliament that relied on its votes to be passed. Merz repeatedly insisted his actions were not jeopardising the firewall. Germany’s Protestant and Catholic churches waded into the row, however, imploring Merz not to collaborate with the AfD in the Bundestag – even if only by the back door – and risk inflicting ‘massive damage’ on Germany’s democracy as a result.
In a sign of just how divisive the issue of closing Germany’s borders has become, Merz’s motion squeaked through with 348 votes in favour and 345 against. The SPD and Greens unilaterally voted against the CDU leader’s proposals – prompting Merz to accuse them of damaging the firewall themselves by failing to support his motion, leaving the AfD as its only backers.
This was the first time a motion had been passed with the AfD’s help in the history of the federal German parliament. Following the vote, the jubilant far-right party’s co-leader Alice Weidel called it a ‘victory for democracy’. The vote is not legally binding for Germany’s parliament – but it will put more pressure on Scholz’s SPD party in particular to act on migration.
Merz tabled his motion the day after Germany suffered its fifth mass attack in twelve months, when a failed asylum seeker attacked a group of preschoolers in a park in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg on 22 January, stabbing an adult and two-year-old child to death and injuring three others. With just a month to go before Germany’s federal election on 23 February, which the CDU is projected to win with approximately 30 per cent of the vote, the attacker’s nationality and asylum status reignited the debate over migration and security in the country with particular ferocity. This is playing directly to the advantage of the AfD, for whom the mass deportation of migrants from Germany has long been a flagship policy.
Had Merz lost the vote, his entire federal election campaign – which pivoted to focus on migration following the Aschaffenburg attack, and the Magdeburg attack of December which killed six and injured nearly 300 – would have been at risk of collapsing. Nevertheless, the CDU leader will still have to see whether his actions yesterday, inviting as they did accusations of breaking the taboo of collaborating with the AfD, will have damaged his lead in the polls.
It is difficult to tell at this stage whether Merz made a calculated decision to open the door to the AfD’s support on the vote, or whether he walked himself into a political trap that to reverse on risked collapsing his election campaign. But the secondary effect of Merz’s collaboration with the AfD – however deliberate or direct he meant it be – is hard to ignore: by chipping away at the firewall in this way, Merz has made it more acceptable for CDU factions further down the political food chain in regional and municipal governments to directly collaborate with the AfD on policy.
Only the coming weeks will tell whether Germany’s voters will reward or punish Merz for associating his migration agenda with the far right. But one thing is for sure: the next month of campaigning will only get messier – on all sides.
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