These are dramatic days in the usually dull world of German politics. Last Wednesday, midway through a fiercely fought federal election campaign, the Bundestag Parliament narrowly voted to close the nation’s borders and curb the legal rights of immigrants. Two days later, the same assembly reversed ferret and voted a similar measure down. So what on earth is going on?
The bills to close the borders were the work of the man likely to become Germany‘s next Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, leader of the CDU/CSU Christian Democrats – the centre-right equivalent of our Tories. Hard pressed in the polls by the hard-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) populist party, Merz took the controversial step of stealing the AfD’s clothes and adopting its anti-migration agenda. To get his measures through the Bundestag, however, he needed the AfD’s parliamentary votes, which effectively shattered the long standing Brandmauer (firewall) built by all parties against the AfD, which rules out any cooperation with the party, on the grounds that the AfD allegedly harbours extremist neo-Nazi tendencies and members.
Two parties of the outgoing coalition government, which collapsed late last year – Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s social democratic SPD and the Greens – accused Merz of making the AfD pariahs salonfahig (respectable) and endangering German democracy. He in turn charged them with forcing him to take such action by their neglect of the nation’s ‘order and security’. ‘How many more people must be murdered?’ he demanded. Merz meant the recent spate of deadly attacks by men with an immigrant background, like the Saudi Arabian psychologist who drove a car into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing six and injuring 300; and an Afghan criminal awaiting deportation who fatally stabbed a two year old toddler and a man who tried to stop him in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg last month.
In the wake of such atrocities, the AfD chancellor candidate Alice Weidel called for the closure of the country’s borders, and the ‘remigration’ of immigrants convicted of crimes. With her party polling more than 20 per cent, and rapidly gaining on the CDU’s 30 per cent, Merz was left with little choice but to harden his line in an election campaign which, along with the slowing economy, is dominated by the immigration issue – even though he knew he risked bringing the AfD in from the cold.
When it came to the Bundestag votes, Merz’s non-binding measure initially squeaked through with the aid of the AfD’s parliamentarians by 348 votes to 345. Forty-eight hours later, however, Liberal rebels in the CDU, emboldened by unprecedented criticism of Merz’s bill as ‘wrong’ by former CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel, helped the centre-left parties vote a near identical bill down on Friday by 350 to 338.
How this confusion will affect the election’s outcome is as yet unclear. The centre-left parties opposing a hard line on migrants have a problem in that a large majority of Germans – 67 per cent according to polls – strongly support Merz’s tough line and blame Merkel for opening Germany’s borders and letting a million largely unvetted refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war flood into the country in 2015.
One little noticed consequence of Merz’s measure, had it passed, would have been Germany breaching the EU’s Schengen agreement abolishing internal borders between member states. Such a break by the bloc’s biggest country would shake the EU to its foundations and kill open borders stone dead. There is already anecdotal evidence of Schengen being ignored by border police stopping and searching vehicles at the frontiers anyway.
Neither killing Merz’s popular bill nor Merkel’s sour criticism will harm his strong chances of becoming chancellor, though lacking an absolute majority and rejecting the AfD, he will probably be forced into an uncomfortable coalition with the SPD and/or the Greens. Merz seems set on continuing to exclude the AfD from power. He told a CDU rally in Berlin on Sunday that the party would remain his main opponent, and that as chancellor he will make Germany a bulwark against the extreme left and far right alike.
Not that this will halt the advance of the AfD – rather the reverse. It is also unlikely that efforts to ban the insurgent party as unconstitutional will bear fruit. No democracy could reasonably outlaw a party enjoying such massive public support, even if they are found to be using Nazi slogans and tropes. Given voters’ reluctance to tell pollsters that they back a hard right party, I would be surprised if the populists draw less than a quarter of all votes on election day on 23 February. Ordinary Germans want to be confident they won’t be knocked down by a maniac in a speeding SUV at a Christmas market this year.
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