The Alternative for Germany party helped conservatives push an immigration restriction proposal over the threshold this week, breaking the long-standing “firewall” separating the party from mainstream politics.
AfD voted alongside the center-right Christian Democratic Union of Germany on Wednesday to successfully pass a proposal that could severely restrict asylum and migration policies for the country.
“Since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany over 75 years ago, there has always been a clear consensus among all democrats in our parliaments: we do not make common cause with the far Right,” lamented German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party.
Scholz criticized the CDU’s cooperation with AfD as an “unforgivable mistake” that has “broken this basic consensus of our republic in the heat of the moment.”
The proposal, which advocates the closure of German land borders to irregular migrants, is nonbinding, but it marks an escalation in the CDU’s efforts to restrict irregular immigration amid growing concern about its toll on social cohesion in the country.
AfD’s role in winning the slim three-vote majority is a watershed moment for German politics, functionally bringing the party into the mainstream after decades of conscious, governmentwide exclusion against parties and people deemed too “far-right” for German politics.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, perhaps the most prominent CDU leader of the 21st century, made a rare public statement on the situation, criticizing her own party for its perceived reneging on an informal agreement to keep AfD at arm’s length.
“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.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz rebuffed criticisms of his party’s cooperation with AfD, asserting that his party did not court their further-right counterparts and that the policy proposal is common sense.
There has been a spike in violent crime committed by migrants over the last several years in Germany, most recently seen in the knife attack on kindergarten children in Aschaffenburg on Jan. 22. The suspect in the case is an Afghan national.
“How many more children have to become victims of such acts of violence before you also believe there is a threat to public safety and order?” Merz asked the Bundestag during debate over the proposal.
The CDU leader remains far from friendly with the right-wing party, however, noting that a proposal does not become wrong just because the “wrong people” support it — an unambiguous denouncement of AfD.
“Thinking about how the AfD fraction will cheer and their happy faces makes me feel uncomfortable,” Merz said.
AfD leaders will seek to capitalize on this breakthrough as the Feb. 23 elections draw closer.
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The party remains in a steady second place behind the CDU, with the Social Democratic Party and Green Party trailing far behind.
Merz plans to put forward legislation to enact the proposal on Friday, which will likely also require AfD’s cooperation to pass.
