German
opposition leader vows to push asylum law change after killings
Friedrich
Merz, favourite to become next chancellor, will bring proposals before
parliament despite possible need for support from AfD
Kate
Connolly in Berlin
Mon 27 Jan
2025 18.34 CET
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.
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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