Abstentions from the migration law: A warning sign for Friedrich Merz

20 MPs from the Union faction abstained from voting on the traffic light plans for asylum and migration policy. They went against the line of parliamentary group leader Merz. What’s going on there?

“Abstentions?” asked the President of the Bundestag after the second reading on the new residence law. Everything turns and looks at the MEPs of the Union. “The left and some from the Union faction,” adds Bärbel Bas. There are 20 members of the CDU in the roll-call vote after the third reading. That’s it. The small uprising in the Union faction has already ended. The dissenters should still make the party and faction leader sit up and take notice. That was a little caution. They won’t carry everything. Friedrich Merz should be warned.

The names indicate where the headwind is coming from. Helge Braun, the former head of the Chancellery, Hermann Gröhe, former Secretary General and later Minister of Health in the Merkel cabinet, Anja Karliczek, former Minister of Education, Monika Grütters, former Minister of State for Culture, Annette Widmann-Mauz, former Minister of Migration and confidante and companion of the former Chancellor.

The “Merkelians” did not want to vote against the traffic light coalition’s new right of residence – as recommended by their parliamentary group leader. They abstained. That alone would hardly be worth reporting if it hadn’t been made public in advance and if there wasn’t resentment among those who supported the former Chancellor’s moderate refugee policy.

There is resistance

There is resistance against the CDU leader and his appearance. With the private plane to Christian Lindner’s wedding, while the rest of the population is supposed to tighten their belts. In the ears of some, that sounds very much like the motto: “Preach water and drink wine”. Merz’s formulation of alleged “social tourism” by Ukrainian refugees also resonates here.

The CDU boss just can’t get rid of the discomfort of some. This also annoys the Merz supporters. Because the issue of migration is important for the Union to differentiate itself to the left and right, to keep the AfD at a distance. Merz, however, made it difficult to put the topic on a factual level with his verbal grip on the Union’s populism box. Merz has made his party vulnerable on the subject. The immigration package presented by the federal government with a clear no from the Union faction would have offered itself to sharpen the conservative profile of the CDU again.

Instead, the dissenters are now being discussed. And about the dissatisfaction that is spreading behind the opposition leader. It is not easy for the party and faction leader to tie all the ends together. The conservatives, the business people and the working-class wing – all want to become more visible again. All sides feel equally neglected after the Merkel era.

A look at the Union’s most recent polls doesn’t really help either. In the Germany trend, the Union increases to 30 percent. But the claim of the deselected governing party is greater. Measured by the performance of the traffic light, that’s not enough – sentences like this can be heard more often in the Union these weeks. It should now be clear to some of you what Franz Müntefering meant when he said: “Opposition is rubbish”.