The centre-right CDU party leader sparked fierce criticism on Wednesday for accepting the far right’s support in pushing a first bill through parliament.
The Bundestag rejected a second bill on Friday calling for stricter immigration rules in Germany. The first proposal, which passed with votes from the far-right Alternative for Germany party earlier this week, sparked mass protests.
The country’s favourite to become next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, proposed a motion asking, among other points, for the end of family reunification for those with subsidiary protection and increased powers for federal police officers to deport migrants.
Unlike the motion passed on Wednesday, the bill was legally binding, meaning it would have become law if the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) — led by Merz — gathered enough votes to support it and if it passed the parliament’s upper house.
However, the proposal failed to get the necessary votes, with 350 voting against the bill after a prolonged and tense parliamentary session in which MPs negotiated behind the scenes and hurled blame on one another.
The CDU extended the scheduled session as it frantically negotiated with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, according to domestic media.
Discussions were seemingly fruitless as Merz further insisted that his proposals were necessary regardless of who voted for them — a suggestion other parties rejected out of hand.
Greens Minister Annalena Baerbock took to the podium to accuse Merz of not standing up for democracy in choosing to work with the AfD.
“You don’t need to tear down a firewall with a wrecking ball to set your own house on fire. It’s enough to keep drilling holes,” Baerbock said.
Both the SPD and the Greens fiercely criticised Friday’s bill as well as the first one, which passed with a razor-thin majority on Wednesday.
Harsh words and demonstrations
The measure, which called on Germany to turn away many more migrants at its borders, sparked mass protests and a rare public rebuke from former Chancellor Angela Merkel, who previously led the CDU.
Merkel called Merz’s decision to work with the AfD “wrong” and accused him of breaking the so-called “firewall” against the party — a political consensus made among Germany’s other parties to keep the far right out of power.
Tens of thousands across Germany protested against Merz’s decision and the prospect of the AfD gaining power, including around 10,000 gathered in Freiburg and some 6,000 outside the CDU’s headquarters in Berlin.
The CDU leader insisted he wanted to pass his measures with votes from the “democratic centre” but that without votes from other parties, he was prepared to accept votes from the AfD.
Scholz has suggested that, after Wednesday’s vote, Merz can no longer be trusted not to enter into a coalition with the AfD. The AfD is currently polling second place with 23%, behind the CDU, which has 30%.
Merz has angrily rejected the suggestion and called on other parties to accept the necessity of his proposals to stem violence in Germany.
The CDU leader has made migration central to his campaign ahead of the country’s elections on 23 February.
He sharpened his rhetoric on the subject after an asylum seeker from Afghanistan was arrested over a knife attack that killed a man and a 2-year-old boy in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg last week.
The incident followed knife attacks in Mannheim and Solingen last year in which the suspects were immigrants from Afghanistan and Syria, and a separate attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg in which the suspect is a Saudi-born doctor.
