Germany’s immigration election is heating up

These are dramatic days in the usually dull world of German politics. Last Wednesday, midway through a fiercely fought federal election campaign, the Bundestag Parliament narrowly voted to close the nation’s borders and curb the legal rights of immigrants. Two days later, the same assembly reversed ferret and voted a similar measure down. So what on earth is going on?

The bills to close the borders were the work of the man likely to become Germany‘s next Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, leader of the CDU/CSU Christian Democrats – the centre-right equivalent of our Tories. Hard pressed in the polls by the hard-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) populist party, Merz took the controversial step of stealing the AfD’s clothes and adopting its anti-migration agenda. To get his measures through the Bundestag, however, he needed the AfD’s parliamentary votes, which effectively shattered the long standing Brandmauer (firewall) built by all parties against the AfD, which rules out any cooperation with the party, on the grounds that the AfD allegedly harbours extremist neo-Nazi tendencies and members.