CDU party leader Friedrich Merz has met with fierce criticism within his own party with his statements about possible joint action with the AfD at the municipal level.
The CDU foreign politician Norbert Rottgen stressed, his party has decided to ban cooperation with the AfD. “Anyone who wants to change that must find a majority at a federal party conference of the #CDU.”
This ban was also confirmed by former CDU general secretary Rupert Polenz: “No, dear Friedrich Merz. Christian Democrats do NOTHING WITH members of a fascist party. Not even in the cities and communities. The CDU chairman should also adhere to the decisions of the CDU federal party conference.”
The AfD, on the other hand, sees the Merz statements positively and wants to make cooperation with the CDU possible in the future. Merz said in the ZDF summer interview on Sunday that the Union would not cooperate with the AfD. However, he now limited this to “legislative bodies”, for example at the European, federal or state level – it is different at the municipal level.
If a district administrator in Thuringia and a mayor in Saxony-Anhalt were elected by the AfD, then those were democratic elections, said Merz. “We have to accept that. And of course the local parliaments have to look for ways to shape the city, the state and the district together.” What exactly he means by that, however, remained open in the interview.
The Vice-President of the Bundestag Yvonne Magwas, who is also a member of the CDU presidium, wrote on Twitter: “Whether it’s the local council or the Bundestag, right-wing radicals remain right-wing radicals. For Christian Democrats, right-wing radicals are ALWAYS the enemy!” Federal President of the Women’s Union Annette Widmann-Mauz (CDU), said with a view to the AfD: “The party and its inhuman & anti-democratic content remain the same, no matter what level.”
Berlin’s Governing Mayor Kai Wegner wrote on Twitter: “The AfD only knows against and division. Where should there be COLLABORATION? The CDU cannot, will not and will not work with a party whose business model is hatred, division and exclusion.”
Merz has “still not realized the AfD’s destruction strategies”
The CDU politician and former Prime Minister of Saarland Tobias Hans wrote on Twitter about Merz’s statements: “The party conference decision states that any cooperation with the AfD is excluded. This is the gradual dilution of party conference decisions after electoral successes of the extreme right.”
CDU federal board member reacted with similar outrage Serap Guler: “No cooperation with the #AfD means: no cooperation with the AfD. On no level. Quite simply. Not now and not in the future either.”
The Berlin CDU member of the Bundestag Jan-Marco Luczak wrote on Twitter that the AfD threatens the liberal constitutional state and the free social order – also in the municipalities. “The @cdu’s #incompatibility decision is clear.” The resolution states, among other things: “Anyone who pleads for a rapprochement or even cooperation with the AfD in the CDU must know that they are approaching a party that deliberately tolerates right-wing extremist ideas, anti-Semitism and racism in its ranks. (…). The CDU rejects any coalitions or similar forms of cooperation with the AfD.”
Christopher Heubner, the executive vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee, said in Berlin that the “unrealistic and negligent statements made by Friedrich Merz make it clear that he has still not realized the AfD’s strategies of destruction”. This AfD does not have the common good of all citizens and the shaping of democracy in mind. “All those in his party and the other democratic parties who strongly oppose him deserve respect and support.”
The Greens chairwoman also criticized Merz Ricardo Lang on ARD: “First he reduces this party to a better alternative for Germany and now he is dismantling the firewall – which was repeatedly invoked by the Union itself – a little bit.”
The FDP politician Marie Agnes Strack Zimmermann wrote: “Local politics is the cradle of our democracy. It is precisely here that the firewall to the anti-democratic AfD must not fall. Otherwise it will fall all the more at the “legislative levels”.
Linnemann defends Merz – and AfD chairman sees the firewall crumbling
The AfD chairman Tino Chrupalla wrote about the debate on Twitter: “Now the first stones are falling from the black-green firewall. In the federal states and the federal government we will tear down the wall together. The winners will be the citizens who regain prosperity, freedom and security through interest-driven politics.”
The new CDU general secretary Carsten Linneman defended Merz: For the CDU it is clear that there is “no cooperation with the AfD”, “no matter what level”, said Linnemann Picture. “Friedrich Merz sees it that way, although he rightly points to the difficult implementation on site. Because when the local parliament is about a new daycare center, we can’t just vote against it because the AfD votes. We don’t make ourselves dependent on right-wing extremists.”
Merz had described the Union as an “alternative for Germany with substance” last week at the retreat of the CSU state group. He also received criticism for this. At the beginning of his tenure as party leader, he had promised “a firewall to the AfD.”
In March 2021, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist. Merz rejected a ban on the party in the ZDF interview: “Party bans have never led to solving a political problem.”
In an Insa survey, the AfD is 22 percent nationwide and thus only four percentage points behind the Union. Thus, the AfD put in the weekly survey on behalf of picture on sunday by two points. In the surveys of other opinion research institutes, the AfD was also at 20 percent. CDU/CSU come to 26 percent at Insa (minus 1 point).
Most recently, in the district of Sonneberg (Thuringia), AfD politician Robert Stuhlmann was elected Germany’s first AfD district administrator. In Raguhn-Jeßnitz in Saxony-Anhalt, an AfD politician was appointed full-time mayor.