Former German chancellor Angela Merkel has criticised Friedrich Merz, her successor as leader of the country’s conservatives, for pushing through proposals on migration and asylum with the backing of the far-right AfD.
In a rare intervention in public affairs since stepping down from politics in December 2021, Merkel said that Merz, who is tipped to become Germany’s next chancellor, had in effect performed a U-turn.
On her website, she wrote that Merz, head of the centre-right CDU/CSU alliance, had said in a speech last November that he was against passing policies with the support of the generally shunned AfD, even it was by “accident”.
She said she stood by the longstanding conviction that there should never be any association between the mainstream parties and the AfD.
“I think it is wrong to no longer feel bound to this proposal, thereby allowing a majority with the votes of the AfD in a vote in the German Bundestag for the first time on 29 January 2025,” she added.
Wednesday’s vote was unprecedented. For the first time the AfD, second in polls ahead of the election on 23 February, was instrumental in helping a mainstream party towards a parliamentary majority. The pro-business FDP also contributed to the motion’s success.
According to the plan, some migrants and asylum seekers could be turned away at the German border, as well as more easily deported from Germany.
Merz, who became leader of the CDU in December 2021, has always been outspoken in his opposition to Merkel’s so-called open door policy under which around a million migrants entered Germany in 2015, saying it “should not be allowed to happen again”.
In her recently published memoirs, Merkel, who had previously blocked Merz’s rise to power within the CDU, said she “did not begrudge” her old rival the position of chancellor, saying she recognised in him the “unconditional desire to have power”, which was necessary to take on the role.
Merkel was praised for her comments published on Thursday, including by Saskia Esken, co-leader of the Social Democrats. “She clearly has the impression that she has to remind Friedrich Merz of his political responsibility,” she told Die Zeit. “I’m very grateful to her.”
Merz had said prior to the vote that he was reluctantly open to the notion that his proposal would only succeed if it received AfD support. After the vote he continued to assert that he had no intention of working with the AfD. But he faced widespread criticism for what some said was his breaking of a “firewall”, according to which the mainstream parties have pledged not to cooperate or coalesce with the AfD.
Speaking at the ballot box after the vote he said: “I want to repeat … that I’m not looking for any other majority other than in the democratic centre of our parliament.”
He said he “regretted” that such a majority had not been possible, which drew derisive laughter and heckles from the benches of the SPD, Greens and the far-left Die Linke.
Merz has faced criticism from the SPD and the Greens, the constituent parts of Olaf Scholz’s minority government, for failing to try to reach a compromise with them after they put proposals for migration reform on the table that they say have been largely ignored by the opposition.
The AfD meanwhile, which has called the “firewall” undemocratic, and which seeks a coalition with the CDU/CSU, has been celebrating what it sees as a victory and a sign that it can no longer be ignored.
The most quoted response in German media from the AfD since the vote was that of MP Bernd Baumann, who said: “This is truly a historic moment … Mr Merz, you helped bring it about and now you stand here with shaking knees, trembling and apologising,” he said, before declaring: “Here and now a new epoch begins.”