Scandal in the German Bundestag AfD celebrates a "new era" after migration vote

dpa

29.1.2025 - 21:45

The CDU/CSU pushes through its migration motion with the help of the AfD. SPD and Greens see a breach of taboo. This day will define the last few weeks before the election - and will have a lasting effect.

DPA

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  • In the German Bundestag, the CDU/CSU is pushing through a hard line on migration policy - and gaining votes from the AfD in the process.
  • The unprecedented event led to fierce criticism of the Union's candidate for chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU), who had expressly accepted votes from the party, some of which is classified as right-wing extremist, in advance.
  • The AfD celebrates the vote as a historic day and sees a "new era" dawning for Germany.

The German Bundestag has voted by a narrow majority in favour of tougher migration policy. One week after the knife attack in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, the CDU and CSU factions of the CDU/CSU have pushed through a Bundestag resolution in favour of a tougher migration policy with votes from the AfD - causing an unprecedented scandal in Germany.

Until now, all parties had ruled out working together with the AfD, which is in part far-right. CDU chairman and candidate for chancellor Friedrich Merz in particular had repeatedly emphasized that there would be no cooperation with the AfD.

Today's vote is now likely to have a decisive impact on the rest of the election campaign until the Bundestag elections on February 23. What it will mean for the formation of a government after the election remains to be seen.

The SPD and Greens accused the CDU/CSU of having left the political center and held CDU leader Friedrich Merz personally responsible for this. After such a vote, one should "not simply go back to business as usual", said SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich.

Merz offered the SPD and the Greens new negotiations. He assured them that he would not seek "any majorities other than those in the democratic center of our parliament". He added: "If there has been such a majority here today, then I regret it."

AfD sees the beginning of a "new era"

The AfD parliamentary group spoke of a historic moment. "Mr. Merz, you helped to bring this about," parliamentary group leader Bernd Baumann called out to the CDU leader. "A new era begins here and now. Something new is beginning. And we are leading it, the new forces are leading it, the forces of the AfD."

AfD chancellor candidate Alice Weidel also spoke of a "historic day for Germany". It was a "victory for democracy", Weidel wrote in the online service X. "Civil majorities have decided in the interests of the people in our country", Weidel continued.

The Bundestag had previously approved a CDU/CSU motion by a majority that provided for more refoulement of asylum seekers at Germany's borders. The motion was supported by 187 CDU/CSU MPs, 75 AfD MPs, 80 members of the FDP parliamentary group and 6 non-attached members. Together, that is 348 votes. 344 MPs were against, ten abstained. The motion has no binding effect, but the resolution is highly symbolic.

The AfD applauded after the result of the vote was announced. The SPD and Greens voted unanimously against, as did Die Linke. The BSW abstained. A second CDU/CSU motion with comprehensive reform proposals for a restrictive migration policy and additional powers for the security authorities was rejected by a majority. Both motions are not legally binding.

Mützenich: "Don't just go back to business as usual"

The session was interrupted after the vote. In the preceding debate, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Merz had engaged in a heated exchange of blows, particularly over how to deal with the AfD. Scholz, the SPD candidate for chancellor, accused Merz of abandoning the clear distinction to extreme right-wing parties. "You are openly accepting the support of the AfD for your unlawful proposals," he said to the opposition leader in his government statement.

Scholz also speculated that the CDU/CSU could enter into a coalition with the AfD after the election. Merz rejected this as "scurrilous" and "infamous" in his response to the Chancellor. "I will do everything I can to prevent that." The CDU leader nevertheless reiterated that he would accept the AfD's approval in order to push through his proposals on migration. He would rather do that than "continue to watch powerlessly as people in our country continue to be threatened, injured and murdered".

Weidel calls government declaration "outrageous"

AfD leader Alice Weidel spoke out against both Scholz and Merz. She called the government statement "outrageous" and accused Scholz of "authoritarian" thinking. "This is democracy without the people, this is democracy without voters," she said. She called the government's migration policy a "politically motivated loss of control". The so-called "firewall" against the AfD was a lever to exclude the will of the voters.

Weidel accused the CDU/CSU of having copied the proposals for curbing migration from the AfD. When session chair Katrin Göring-Eckardt announced that the majority for the motion on refoulement had been achieved, the AfD MPs hugged and congratulated each other.

After Aschaffenburg, only two election issues left

The starting point for the current migration debate was the knife attack in Aschaffenburg, which left two people dead and completely turned the Bundestag election campaign upside down a week ago. An apparently mentally ill man from Afghanistan is said to have killed two people, including a two-year-old boy with Moroccan roots from a kindergarten group. Several other people were seriously injured. The 28-year-old suspect was required to leave the country.

Since then, the election campaign has mainly been about migration and how to deal with the AfD. The CDU/CSU believes that the case has strengthened its call for a massive tightening of measures against irregular migration. Merz said in the Bundestag that we owe it to the victims. The red-green minority government sees the problem more in the implementation of the existing rules by the responsible authorities. It considers the Union's proposals to be unlawful.

Churches fear "massive damage" to democracy

Before the debate began, MPs commemorated the victims of Aschaffenburg. Bundestag President Bärbel Bas called for a fair discussion. Immediately before the vote, the two major churches spoke out against the Union's course with unusually harsh words.

In a joint statement by the Berlin representatives of the Catholic bishops and the Council of the Protestant Church, the parliamentary groups had agreed with the dissolution of the traffic light coalition not to bring about any votes in which the votes of the AfD were decisive. "We fear that German democracy will suffer massive damage if this political promise is abandoned."