The likely next chancellor wants to adopt the right-wing AfD’s migration policies while still sidelining the party itself
Germany has the blues. So far, so ordinary. But, with only weeks to go before government-collapse-induced snap elections on February 23, Germany is also in a bit of an uproar.
Political competitors are taking the gloves off, striking at each other with insults and character assassination, while in the streets there are demonstrations with protesters numbering in, at least, the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. The reason for the emotional-political spike is that the so-called “firewall” between the mainstream parties of the self-declared democratic center and their insurgent challengers on the right wing/far right is cracking. Or, to say it with Bloomberg, “German election taboos” have been broken.
The gist of the matter is that Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s mainstream conservatives (CDU) and, as polls consistently show, most likely the next chancellor, has chosen the issue of migration to make a stand. Against the backdrop of several recent and severe lethal attacks in the cities of Mannheim, Solingen, Magdeburg, and Aschaffenburg that involved perpetrators from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, Merz introduced a package of measures in the German parliament (including a non-binding resolution and a draft law) aimed at a much harsher migration policy.
The non-binding resolution, which is largely symbolic, was debated and voted on first, on Wednesday, January 29. The law’s turn came two days later, on Friday, January 31. Both days were filled with high drama in Berlin, but the outcomes were different. On Wednesday, Merz won. On Friday, he lost because the draft measure with the clumsy (yes, in German, too) name “influx-limiting law” was voted down.
The full legislative process in Germany means that, in the end, the law would probably not have survived anyhow. But it is still easy to see why many observers, including at Bloomberg, consider this defeat a “shock setback” for Merz. After all, Merz lost because he could not prevent 12 members of his own party from withholding their support. Their votes would have been enough to tilt the scales in his favor. And yet those observers may be missing the whole picture. To see why, we need some background.
In Germany, as in many other countries, migration policy is a scalding-hot topic. It traditionally features among the top concerns of German voters. Indeed, some polls show that it is currently the single most important issue for them, solidly ahead of the stagnant-and-worse economy and leaving worries about wages and inflation, climate change and energy, and war far behind. But Merz’s initiative would not have had the same explosive power if not for another aspect: while explicitly rejecting any form of cooperation – now or after the elections – the conservative mainstream leader had, in effect, invited the right wing/far-right AfD party to vote for his proposals.
Merz keeps denying any intention of opening a path toward building a post-election coalition with the AfD, which all polls show would have a solid majority to govern. He insists that he is merely pursuing policies he considers urgently needed. In his own words, “what is objectively right [read: my ideas] does not turn wrong because the wrong ones [read: the AfD] agree with it.” Merz even made sure to include some strictly besides-the-point offensive language about the AfD in the CDU resolution. But the fact remains – and no one is missing it, in or outside Germany – that, on Wednesday, Merz deliberately produced the first case in which a party of the self-appointed center voted with the AfD to defeat other center parties.
As recently as last November, Merz, it is true, had unambiguously promised not to do precisely that. And former chancellor Angela Merkel has joined the ranks of his current critics, implicitly – and correctly – charging him with breaking his word. Her censure, however, lacks force. Not merely because she and Merz are old enemies bound to each other by heartfelt mutual loathing, but also because changing one’s mind and even going back on one’s word are not unprecedented in politics and can even be necessary. In any case, participating in a grand deception to make Russia believe the West and Ukraine were really interested in a Minsk 2-based peace while arming Kiev for another war, as Merkel has admitted having done, was arguably a more consequential case of lying.
Merz is giving as hard as he gets in this sideshow standoff with his old nemesis. He has reminded Germans that the migration crisis and hence the rise of the AfD are a result of Merkel’s decisions when she was in power. In that, he has now been seconded by Sebastian Kurz, the former chancellor of Austria, who reaches a large audience through Germany’s most powerful and very conservative yellow-press newspaper, Bild. What makes Kurz’s intervention particularly interesting is the fact that he used to rule with a mainstream-right/far-right coalition. Just the kind of thing Merz still says he would never ever do.
It is unclear what would have happened to Merz’s proposals if implemented. As his critics can’t stop reiterating, some of them would clash with EU laws. Legal gray zones and unresolved debates are involved: Merz’s conservatives, for instance, retort that Article 72 of the EU’s Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union – one of two de facto constitutional agreements of the Union – can justify their planned policies.
That short article constitutes, in essence, a loophole allowing member states to disregard EU rules in the name of “the maintenance of law and order and the safeguarding of internal security.” But, of course, using that loophole is supposed to be a rare exception. In 2023, for instance, France was essentially reprimanded by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for practicing what Merz wants Germany to do as well, namely turning away migrants at an intra-EU border without giving them the opportunity to claim asylum. The practice, the court found, is almost always illegal.
In theory, breaking EU law should not be possible without painful consequences. Yet in practice, in the EU as it really works (or fails to work), bending and breaking the law is a widespread habit and necessity. As in many organizations, just more so, if things were always done by the book, chaos and collapse would ensue. Hence, sanctions are applied rarely and selectively, as a weaponized tool of enforcing geopolitical conformity (as against Hungary, for instance).
France, typically, did not change its actual behavior, as a French report underlined in 2024. Apart from Paris, in the specific area of migration policy, the German magazine Spiegel finds no fewer than seven other member states that systematically break EU rules, as well as, by the way, the UN’s 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention: Croatia, Finland, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. That list is certain to be incomplete.
For now, at any rate, what is most consequential about Merz’s moves are the domestic effects inside Germany, one of the EU’s core countries. Sometimes what does not happen is at least as important as what does. A little over a decade ago or so, Merz’s campaign and his political career as a whole would probably not have survived his maneuvering with the AfD and especially not his current defeat.
Now, however, the waters around him may be getting choppy, but despite losing Friday’s vote he seems safe enough. And notwithstanding Merkel’s potshots from the sidelines – they may have helped deny him victory on Friday, but the preponderant majority of his party, let’s not forget, stayed with him, while quite a few are angry with Merkel. Merz may still derive electoral profit from his maneuver.
Consider fresh, representative data by the reputable pollster INSA showing that over 76% of Germans are not content with current migration policies. It is true that this is no great surprise and, in and of itself, says little about how they feel about Merz’s move. Yet there also is this: almost 68% of respondents believe that the Social Democrats (SPD) should not have fought Merz’s legislation initiative but, instead, should have voted for it. Even 51% of those identifying as SPD supporters believe their party should have followed his lead.
So, clearly, the pervasive discontent with migration policy as it is does translate into substantial support for Merz’s proposed legislation as not voted through on Friday. So, who will voters blame in the end: Merz for not succeeding in giving them what they want? Or his opponents for stopping him? The answer to that crucial question will emerge only over the next weeks, and it will become final only on election day itself.
Likewise, the INSA poll shows that 69% of Germans approve of the non-binding resolution passed two days before with the combined votes of Merz’s conservatives and the jubilant AfD. Yet, importantly, at the same time, only a minority (if a large one) of 35.3% believe that garnering AfD support for Merz’s initiative was a good thing. A plurality of 44.6% disapprove of relying on AfD votes.
What is emerging here, then, is that Merz can count on strong, perhaps massive support for his tough proposals on migration policy, but many Germans still would prefer to get the same policies but without AfD involvement. Yet the AfD has – correctly – pointed out that Merz has, in essence, copied its ideas. In other words: Many Germans want AfD content, but in CDU packaging.
And that is, of course, precisely what Merz’s whole maneuver was really about. His critics have a point: it was about leveling the “firewall.” But they are wrong about how Merz intends to do it: He was not trying to do the AfD a favor by making it coalition-able and including it in the self-declared center. Merz’s assertion that he sees the AfD as aiming at “annihilating” his mainstream conservatives is credible because it makes sense. Hence, what he was really after is leaving the AfD outside, while adopting – or, really, stealing – its policies.
Merz’s real aim was not to widen the circle of those considered legitimate coalition partners by Berlin’s mainstream parties. Indeed, keeping the AfD beyond the pale means excluding his most dangerous rivals, which would suit him just fine. His strategy has been to bring AfD policies into the so-called center, and only the policies. That means he is, in reality, AfD-ing the mainstream conservatives.
And that is why it is too early to assess what Friday’s defeat really means for him and for German politics. It is true that the AfD leadership is making hay of it: Key AfD leader Alice Weidel – the one Elon Musk has a tragic crush on – mocked Merz for “leaping like a tiger and landing like a bedside rug” (presumably made of tiger skin). Ouch. More seriously, the AfD now has an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to German voters that if they want AfD content, they will not get it in CDU packaging. Or to be precise, it is Merz’s own CDU that has demonstrated just that. In that important sense, Merz underlying strategy has backfired spectacularly.
And yet – only for now. Because, first, the migration issue and the massive popular discontent about it are not going away. Second, as noted above, it remains to be seen who voters will blame the most: Merz or those who stopped him.
And third, if you tune out the noise and focus on the signal, it is true that Merz can’t stop saying that he will never build a coalition with the AfD. But then he used to say he would never rely on their votes just three months ago. Yet now he has. And, more importantly, his opponents from the SPD and Greens have given him an opportunity to revise his position more fundamentally in favor of working with the AfD. They have just demonstrated, as if in a controlled experiment, that the self-declared center alone will not produce the policies many Germans want.
After the bloody attack of Aschaffenburg in particular, Merz has claimed that it is his conscience that made him go back on his word about never even using AfD votes. Now he is close to being able to claim that it will also be his conscience that compels him to change course even further. He would not do so before the election, obviously. Yet whatever he says now, do not be too sure about what will happen once the votes are in. And if Merz should end up making that final move of bringing the AfD into a government coalition, it is a simple if ironic fact of politics that the radical centrists from the SPD and the Greens will have facilitated it.
