The great revolt was not forthcoming. The run-up to the party congress of the German Christian Democratic CDU was tense, after the party led a motion through the Bundestag last week with the support of the radical-right Department. With that, agreements broke a ‘fire wall’ to build that party with the-CDU-KanSelier candidate Friedrich Merz himself proposed by not having it affected in the Bundestag. Did Merz be at the party congress this Monday at a motion of no confidence, on heated discussions, on hard words?
None of that: Merz was received with a minute -long -standing ovation. The 1,001 representatives unanimously agreed with the proposed party program of the CDU. Part of that party program is the ‘five -step plan’ from Wednesday’s accepted motion to limit migration, but also the bill that was not adopted on Friday, partly because some CDU people abstained from a vote. The proposal should limit the “influx of foreigners” to Germany, for example by suspending family reunification and making evictions easier without the intervention of the immigration service.
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That proposal was narrowly rejected in the Bundestag, but if Merz becomes Chancellor, he still wants to implement his plans immediately. The CDU people voted for a so -called Sofort program: a program that starts ‘immediately’. In other words: as soon as a new government has been formed and, as a CDU wins, Friedrich Merz becomes Chancellor.
Unanimous support
The unanimous support is remarkable because the actions of Merz last week were not only strongly convicted outside the CDU, by other political parties, but also within their own ranks. Former Chancellor and party prominent Angela Merkel called it “wrong” and thus criticized her own party for the first time since she waved goodbye. The German Catholic and Protestant churches also warned in a joint letter to the Parliament for collaborations with radical-right parties. Political scientist Hajo Funke said to NRC It is to be expected that the motion would also cause unrest among voters and that votes would cost votes, although it has not yet been apparent from the polls.
Since the Second World War, the unwritten rule applies that no proposals are adopted in the Bundestag with the support of a radical-right or nationalist party. In a speech last November, Merz explicitly suggested that it will be sustained with regard to AfD, so that a majority will never be achieved with that party.
Radical-right
About three weeks before the elections on February 23, Merz broke with that tradition on the most important theme of the election struggle: migration. Critics believe that CDU is increasingly against ATD or legitimizes the party. Unfounded, according to CDU chairman Markus Söder, who said at the congress that only ‘De Unie’ (the collective name for CDU and the Bavarian sister party CSU) can protect AfD.
In his speech, Merz repeated not to rule with the AfD and not to work with it. He called the situation of last week an ‘exception’ – the question of whether he excludes that to make those kinds of exceptions more often, he answered evasively: “To the extent that it can be foreseen, a situation like this will not occur again.”
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So there was little criticism, outside it was different: hundreds of people gathered for the congress location in Berlin to protest. In recent days, hundreds of thousands of people in different cities, such as Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne, protested against the shift to radical right in German politics, in response to the controversial CDU proposals in the Bundestag.