Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s opposition conservatives, has vowed to bring proposals for an immediate change to the country’s asylum law before parliament this week, even if it ends up being passed with the support of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland.
Merz, who is expected to become Germany’s next chancellor, has been accused of shifting his position on the country’s “firewall” against the party with the proposed law change, which would aim to dramatically increase the number of deportations.
The sharpened tone in Merz’s rhetoric follows an attack in the southern city of Aschaffenburg last week in which a two-year-old child and a 41-year-old man were stabbed to death by an asylum seeker from Afghanistan who had been scheduled for deportation.
Authorities have been blamed for failing to recognise the danger the man posed to the public due to a psychiatric illness for which he was being treated. The attack has swung the election campaign ahead of polling day on 23 February heavily towards voter concerns over migration and domestic security.
Both are favoured campaign themes of the AfD, whose co-leader Alice Weidel, appearing alongside a beamed-in Elon Musk at the weekend, promised that “on day one” her party would close Germany’s borders.
On Monday, after meetings with his party executive in Berlin, Merz said: “It is now really time to make decisions.” He told reporters: “There are 40,000 asylum applicants who need to be deported. A local politician told me this weekend that there are ticking timebombs walking around our towns and communities.”
If the first reading of the law change is successfully put to the test, Merz’s CDU/CSU would push for a decision as soon as this week on the law’s passage through parliament. Due to the two-thirds majority needed, Merz has left open the possibility that he will need the support of the anti-immigrant AfD to get it through.
However, in an apparent attempt to assuage criticism that he is flirting with the far-right populists, he has also stated in submissions to parliament that the AfD is “not our partner, but our political opponent”.
He has also appealed to the Social Democrats and Greens, the two parties remaining in Olaf Scholz’s coalition, to back the changes, even as the foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, of the Greens, said the plans would “ruin Europe” and accused Merz of wanting to “break European law and build a fence around Germany”.
Merz said: “I’m not on the lookout for other majorities in the German parliament,” rather, he anticipated that the SPDs and Greens would “come to their senses”.
The pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), who left the government after a row over budget management, pledged its support to Merz on Monday. The “leftwing conservative” Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) has said it would also back him.
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The AfD, meanwhile, has described Merz’s proposals as “absurd”. The party’s parliamentary group is expected to decide on Tuesday how it plans to vote.
There is speculation that it might plan to submit its own proposal to the Bundestag in an attempt to humiliate the conservatives into being forced to vote against their own policy if they wish to avoid working with the AfD.
Austria’s caretaker chancellor, Alexander Schallenburg of the sister party to the CDU/CSU, the ÖVP, which is negotiating with the far-right FPÖ over a new coalition government, said he welcomed the “rethink” taking place in Germany’s migration policy, but insisted that European Union members needed to stick to common rules.
“Everyone knows we need common solutions,” he said. “If every one of us decided to pull up the drawbridge one by one, we’d all be poorer and no one would be safer.”
Tens of thousands of Germans took to the streets of German cities at the weekend to demonstrate against the far-right, and to denounce Merz’s border plans, which he first outlined last week.
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