Germany’s conservative opposition, leading in the polls ahead of national elections on 23 February, this week outlined plans to shift the European Union powerhouse firmly to the right on immigration, social and economic policy.
Friedrich Merz, head of the Christian Democrats (CDU), is currently tipped to replace Social Democrat chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose term the conservatives have slammed as “three lost years” over Germany’s stuttering economy.
A day after Scholz on Monday lost a parliamentary confidence vote he called to pave the way for the early elections, Merz claimed the chancellor had “lost the confidence of a majority of the population a long time ago”.
Merz – a rival of his party’s more moderate ex-chancellor Angela Merkel – has vowed to orchestrate a return to the CDU’s right-wing roots as he competes against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
In their party programme, the CDU and its Bavarian allies, the CSU, vow to “stop illegal migration”, strictly control Germany’s borders and scale down benefits for rejected asylum seekers to a “bed, bread and soap” minimum.
Those demands may be softened in the coalition talks that typically follow German elections, but for now the alliance has vowed to reverse two decades of more centrist rule dating back to the early Merkel years.
In their programme, the conservatives promise a “fundamental shift in migration policy” and criticise the Merkel years, without naming her, by declaring that “we also made mistakes in government – and learnt from them”.
They vow to implement a tough law and order offensive with “zero tolerance” on crime, stepped up video surveillance in public spaces and efforts to “shut down mosques where hate and anti-Semitism are being preached”.
To revive Europe’s largest economy, which is expected to shrink for the second year in a row, the conservatives want to slash unemployment benefits and make “hard work worth it again”.
The alliance also said it would reverse the legalisation of marijuana enacted by Scholz’s three-party alliance with the Greens and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), which collapsed in acrimony in early November.
The CDU also said it opposes efforts to liberalise abortion rules and Germany’s gender self-determination law, arguing that young people must not be allowed to change their gender without expert advice or a court decision.
Speaking at a joint press conference, CSU leader Markus Soeder summed up the parties’ position as middle-class, social and conservative and “definitely not left-wing and not woke and not gendered”. – Nampa/AFP
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