German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday rejected calls from some in his party to ease his refusal to do business with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, making it clear that the still-growing party has nothing in common with his conservative wing.
The anti-immigration AfD finished second in Germany’s snap elections in February, and subsequent opinion polls have shown its support base continues to grow, with some saying it is on par with or even surpassing Merz’s coalition bloc.
Merz has been in a coalition with the center-left Social Democratic Party for nearly six months, and many voters have been troubled by public disagreements on a number of issues.
Five of Germany’s 16 states will hold local elections next year, including two in the former communist country’s east, where the AfD is particularly strong and likely to come in first place.
The 2018 congress of Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) rejected “coalitions and similar forms of cooperation” with the AfD and left-wing parties at the other end of the political spectrum.
This leaves it with limited room to maneuver in a changing political landscape where it is increasingly rare for coalitions of like-minded parties to win a majority.
Last week, several conservatives, including former CDU general secretary Peter Tauber and former defense minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, advocated a more accommodative approach to the AfD.
Tauber proposed a “new red line policy” that would explicitly allow the CDU to make decisions that favor far-right parties.
Merz said Monday that no one in the party leadership questioned the 2018 decisions and that despite calls from what he called “a small minority of people,” “we’re not going to change anything.”
“There is nothing in common between this party and us,” Merz told reporters after a meeting with CDU leaders.
He rejected suggestions that the CDU could advance its priorities alongside the AfD, declaring that the far-right party opposed not only the policies of the past decade, but also the decades of decisions that made modern Germany a success.
The AfD has repeatedly called on the CDU to dismantle what is widely seen as a firewall blocking cooperation with the far right.
But that outstretched hand is actually the hand that wants to destroy us, Merz said.
The chancellor admitted that the coalition government had held “too many public debates” since it took office in May, with priorities including revitalizing Germany’s sluggish economy and reducing irregular migration.
“These discussions hide the fact that the government has been on the right track in recent months,” he added.
Support for the AfD remains high despite Germany’s domestic intelligence agency classifying it as a right-wing extremist organization and suspending the designation after the AfD launched a legal challenge.
Additional sources of information • AP