She slammed the decision by Friedrich Merz, frontrunner to be Germany’s next chancellor, to rely on far-right votes to pass an anti-immigration motion in parliament.
The deal broke a long-standing commitment to isolate the AfD, which is polling in second place ahead of the Feb. 23 election.
“I consider it wrong to abandon this commitment and, as a result, to knowingly allow a majority with AfD votes in the Bundestag for the first time,” Merkel said in a statement on what Germans refer to as the “firewall” meant to shut out the AfD.
Merkel referred to an agreement Merz made in November 2024, when he explicitly pledged to prevent the AfD from playing a decisive role in Bundestag votes.
Merz and Merkel have been at odds inside the CDU at least since 2002, when Merkel effectively exiled him from the party’s leadership. Since Merz’s comeback in 2022, he has shifted the party significantly to the right, in many ways undoing Merkel’s centrist legacy — particularly when it comes to the issue of migration.
German lawmakers are in a tizzy. Unfocused and indecisive.
German parliamentarians are set to debate a hotly contested proposal on banning the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), but there’s little consensus, even among the party’s critics, on whether it’s a good idea to be having such a discussion just weeks ahead of a national election.
On Thursday, lawmakers will consider a proposal to direct Germany’s top court to examine whether the AfD is an anti-constitutional party, a first step toward legally banning it under German law.
Though the proposal to examine a ban on the AfD has little chance of passing, its backers say they are obliged to use all means available under the German constitution to stop a party they believe poses a grave threat to democracy.
But many AfD critics fear the ban debate will play into the hands of the far right by further alienating the party’s many voters — and fueling the AfD narrative that mainstream parties are the ones subverting democracy by scorning the democratic will of their many supporters. The party is polling in second place on 20 percent ahead of a national election set for Feb. 23.