Conservative leader’s gambit to weaken the postwar ‘firewall’ may be a boon for the AfD ahead of a national election.
Friedrich Merz, the frontrunner to become Germany’s next chancellor, is wagering that despite his country’s Nazi past, its voters aren’t all that different from other Europeans.
As mainstream parties falter in their efforts to isolate rising far-right parties across Europe, Merz has made a risky calculation: that persuading German voters he and his conservatives are serious about cracking down on migration is more important than upholding the strict quarantine on the far right, in place since the end of World War II.
For Merz, in fact, weakening the quarantine may even help the conservatives make their case ahead of the Feb. 23 snap election.
Merz and his party attempted last week to push a series of tough measures on asylum seekers through parliament last week with the support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), a taboo-breaking gambit undermining the country’s “firewall” against the extreme right. They failed, but Merz is now doubling down, arguing the episode merely exposed where the parties stand on the key issue of migration.
“When should such a clarification take place, if not three weeks before a federal election?” Merz told a reporter during a weekend campaign stop in his home state of Sauerland in western Germany. “Now there is clarity,” he said. “Things couldn’t be better.”
Ultimately, however, it’s the far right that may benefit most.
‘Gates of hell’
As an anti-immigration tempest propels the far right across Europe, the will of conservatives to quarantine radical-right parties is weakening everywhere from Austria to the Netherlands. Merz is betting Germany is not an outlier, despite its dark history, and that his conservatives will not fight the prevailing winds even if that means standing side by side with the far right on tough migration measures.
But many Germans seem to feel differently, judging from their outrage at Merz’s bid, for the first time in Germany’s postwar history, to pass a non-binding motion with far-right support that called for asylum seekers to be rejected at the country’s borders. On Friday, Merz’s conservatives tried again, but this time failed to pass an immigration bill despite near-unanimous AfD support — a humiliating defeat for the election frontrunner.
In response to Merz’s tactics, tens of thousands of demonstrators turned out in cities across the country over the weekend to protest the weakening of the firewall. “Merz can no longer be trusted,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz; Robert Habeck, the chancellor candidate for the Greens, called Merz’s change of tack on the firewall “a disqualification” for the office of chancellor.
Meanwhile, in a parliamentary debate, Rolf Mützenich, a senior member of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), accused Merz of opening “the gates of hell” and urged him to heed the lessons of Germany’s 1920s Weimar Republic, which later gave way to Nazi reign, saying the republic had failed due to “the lack of unity on the part of democrats.”
Merz insists he is not cooperating with the AfD but merely seeking to pass measures favored by the conservatives, without regard to who else supports them. And unlike conservatives elsewhere in Europe, Merz continues to promise he won’t govern in coalition with the far right. If he keeps to his word, he’d likely have to govern with one of the center-left parties that are outraged by his tactics.
The only way to stop the AfD, Merz contends, is if mainstream parties like his drastically cut migration. If center-left parties won’t support him, he says, he’ll do it with help from the far right.
Most conservatives are closing ranks behind him.
“I am personally convinced that the firewall is an absolutely unsuitable concept” for fighting the AfD, Jürgen Hardt, a senior parliamentarian for Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told POLITICO.
“The attitude of many on the left is that you must exclude and marginalize these people. That is an extremely dangerous concept. Because behind the firewall, the fire rages on.”
‘The dismantling’ of Merz
While Merz enjoys considerable support within the current ranks of his party, an intervention by Angela Merkel last week revealed a conservative schism, with the former CDU chancellor calling Merz’s acceptance of AfD support “wrong.” In a further sign of that division, 12 conservative parliamentarians on Friday didn’t vote for the immigration bill Merz sought to pass with AfD support, leading to its failure.
But that’s unlikely to convince Merz to change course. Having pulled the party sharply to the right since taking the helm in 2022, he has sought in many ways to undo the legacy of Merkel, whose generous refugee polices he believes enabled the AfD to rise in the first place.
In fact, Merz may even welcome Merkel’s criticism as he battles the AfD for right-wing voters’ affections. Merz has tried hard to differentiate himself from Merkel, but far-right leaders have lumped the two together and claimed the AfD is the only truly anti-immigration party.
A CDU party conference in Berlin on Monday may reveal more internecine divisions, but Merz is pressing on. At the conference he wants his party to vote on policies to be enacted if they win the election, including the immigration measures supported by the AfD in the parliament last week.
Merz believes his anti-immigration course will ultimately draw voters to the conservative alliance, which is now polling at 30 percent but has been static or trending down in polls of late. The AfD, by contrast, is in second with 21 percent and has seen its support rise in recent weeks.
In the end, however, Merz may end up losing votes, both from centrists repulsed by his weakening of the firewall, and from those farther to the right who believe his anti-immigration promises will be non-starters in a future coalition government with the SPD or the Greens.
In fact, Merz’s tactic may well end up benefiting the far right the most. The AfD seized on his failure to pass the immigration bill Friday, despite the far-right support, as proof the conservatives are unable to enact true change — and as evidence of Merz’s fecklessness.
“That was the dismantling of Friedrich Merz as a candidate for chancellor,” said Alice Weidel, the chancellor candidate for the AfD, after the vote. “There can only be a turnaround on migration and real political change with the Alternative for Germany.”
She then drove the knife home.
“Friedrich Merz jumped in as a tiger,” she said, “and ended up as a bedside rug.”
Nette Nöstlinger contributed reporting.
