German migration bill fails amid storm of controversy
January 31, 2025
Wild verbal battles in the Bundestag, loud demonstrations on the streets, talk of betrayal and of taboos being broken: it has been an extraordinary few days in German politics.
On Friday, parliament narrowly rejected a bill to significantly tighten asylum laws with supporting votes from conservative Christian Democrats and Christian Socialists (CDU/CSU), the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).
CDU chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz managed to push through a nonbinding motion on asylum policy on Wednesday, relying for the first time on the support of the far-right Alternative for Germany. Merz had insisted that decisions on migration are needed now, regardless of who supports them.
The controversial motion advocates permanent border controls with all neighboring countries and for people to be turned back at the borders, even if they make a request for asylum — a clear violation of the law.
According to the most recent Deutschlandtrend poll from public broadcaster ARD, a large majority of the German population is in favor of tightening migration policy. However, an equally large majority is also against any political parties entering into a coalition agreement with the AfD.
With just over three weeks to go before the snap federal election on February 23, the CDU is polling at around 30% and Merz stands good chance of becoming the country's next chancellor. The AfD is in second, with about 20%. On Friday, Merz reaffirmed that he does not want to work with the AfD.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz is currently running the country as part of a minority government with the Greens. Speaking with the weekly broadsheet Die Zeit on Friday, he warned that Germany is close to following a similar path to that of Austria, where the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) won the election last autumn and is now on the brink of leading a government with the conservative People's Party.
Scholz told the weekly broadsheet that the centrist parties in Austria had initially promised not to form a coalition with the populist FPÖ, "…and in the end there may be a coalition with them and even an FPÖ chancellor."
Merkel: 'Wrong' to rely on AfD support
Speaking at a meeting of his parliamentary group in the Bundestag on Friday morning, Merz said it was "far-fetched" to claim he was aiming to work with the far-right AfD. However, former Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a different view.
On Thursday, she published a statement in which she wrote that Merz had recently assured her that he would only seek majorities with the parties of the democratic center. "I believe it is wrong to no longer feel bound by this proposal and thus, for the first time, to allow a majority with the votes of the AfD in a vote in the German Bundestag," she said, referring to Wednesday's vote.
Merz, for his part, said in the Bundestag on Friday that the country had pursued a fundamentally wrong immigration policy in recent years.
"And my party also bears a great deal of responsibility for this," he said, without mentioning Merkel by name. "If we had done better back then, the AfD would not have entered the Bundestag in 2017. And it wouldn't have got back into the Bundestag in 2021 either."
Merz and Merkel have a highly complicated relationship. In 2002, Merkel replaced Merz as leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, then became chancellor in 2005 and pushed the archconservative Merz into the background.
Merkel led the party deep into the political center, adopting numerous political positions from the center-left Social Democrats (SPD). Exasperated, Merz retired to the private sector, only to become parliamentary group leader again and then party chairman after Merkel's retirement from politics in 2021.
This article was originally written in German.
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