The CDU and the AfD – is something going on, at least at the municipal level? Statements by party leader Merz that can be interpreted in this way have triggered a storm of indignation among the Christian Democrats.
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.
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.” The AfD, on the other hand, sees the Merz statements positively and wants to make cooperation with the CDU possible in the future.
In the ZDF summer interview, Merz reaffirmed that the Union would not cooperate with the AfD. However, he now restricted this to “legislative bodies”, for example at the European, federal or state 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.
Outraged CDU politicians
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!”
The Federal Chairwoman of the Women’s Union, Annette Widmann-Mauz (CDU), said with regard to the AfD: “The party and its inhuman and anti-democratic content remain the same, no matter what level.” The CDU foreign politician Norbert Röttgen emphasized that his party had 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.”
The CDU politician and former Saarland Prime Minister 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 election successes of the extreme right.”
CDU federal board member Serap Güler reacted with similar outrage: “No cooperation with the #AfD means: no cooperation with the AfD. On no level. Very simple. 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.”
Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice-President of the International Auschwitz Committee, said in Berlin that Friedrich Merz’s “unrealistic and negligent statements make it clear that he has still not implemented 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.”
AfD chairman sees stones falling from the black and green firewall
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.”
Greens are also irritated by Merz
Green party leader Ricarda Lang also criticized Merz on ARD: “First he reduces this party to a better alternative for Germany and now he’s dismantling the firewall – which the Union itself has repeatedly invoked – 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
The new CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann defended Merz: For the CDU it was clear that there was “no cooperation with the AfD”, “no matter what level”, Linnemann told the “Bild”. “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. The AfD thus gained two points in the weekly poll commissioned by “Bild am Sonntag”. 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.