German conservatives reject any collaboration with ultranationalists

German conservatives reject any collaboration with ultranationalists despite their current rise

Merz: “as long as I am president of the CDU there will be no collaboration” with Alternative for Germany

The German conservatives have categorically reiterated their rejection of any possibility of alliance or collaboration with the ultranationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD), despite the fact that this formation is on the rise in electoral polls and has surpassed the Greens in voting intentions, in addition to tie with the Social Democrats (SPD), who lead the tripartite coalition that governs in Berlin with environmentalists and liberals (FDP) at the hands of the federal chancellor, Olaf Scholz. “As long as I am president of the CDU there will be no collaboration with that party,” said the president of the Christian Democrats, Friedrich Merz, before the rise of the populists.

“That party is xenophobic. That party is anti-Semitic. We have nothing to do with these people and here there will be no collaboration, underhand, overhand, on the table or under the table with me and with us,” the leader of the the German conservatives, whose formation has been leading the electoral polls for months with an advantage of up to ten points over the SPD. The latest poll by the public television channel ARD last Friday established a tie in voting intentions between the SPD and AfD with 18% of potential votes for each one.

The most recent, published by the Insa institute in the Sunday Bild am Sonntag, indicated that the SPD and the AfD were tied with 19% of the vote. The Union parties, Christian Democrats and Bavarian Social Christians (CDU/CSU), added 29% of the vote in the first poll and 27% in the second. For Friedrich Merz, the sharp rise in the ultranationalists’ intention to vote has its origin in the weakness of the tripartite government that governs the country and its problems in transmitting to the public the decisions it makes on controversial issues such as the law to force the use of heating ecological measures, measures to deal with health deficiencies or the fight against inflation.

“If we had a government that worked politically well, the AfD would not reach 18% of the vote,” said Merz, who especially criticized the Greens for their work in the federal executive. “People in Germany are fed up with being protected in this way. That way they only get air,” said the president of the CDU, who refused to use the language of ultranationalists when he criticizes the government. “We do not use the words of the AfD,” he pointed out, to then point out that he is not willing to have the AfD brought to him every time he criticizes the tripartite.

Despite its rise in the polls and being represented in the Bundestag and a good part of the parliaments of the different federal states, as well as German municipalities, especially in the east of the country, Alternative for Germany is a party that is politically isolated . All the other political formations in Germany reject any alliance or collaboration with the populists and are willing to make all kinds of pacts and coalitions in order to prevent ultranationalists from gaining power.