Former Chancellor in an interview: Merkel against the Union’s demand for rejections at the border

In the looming federal election campaign, ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel is positioning herself in migration policy against Union demands for migrants to be rejected at the German borders. “I still don’t think that’s right,” the 70-year-old told “Spiegel”. “It’s an illusion to assume that everything will be fine if we turn back refugees at the German border.” If the EU does not succeed in solving the problem of illegal migration, it fears “a bit of a reversal of European integration, with consequences that cannot be estimated.”

CDU leader and candidate for chancellor Friedrich Merz and the CSU repeatedly call for a tougher course in asylum policy, including rejections at the German border. Merkel now said that “border controls have been introduced and a lot of other things that are right, and that is having an effect.” She defended her decision in 2015 not to close the open German borders in view of the refugee movements from Hungary via Austria to Germany. “I had the feeling at the time that I would have otherwise given up the entire credibility of the Sunday speeches about our great values ​​in Europe and human dignity.” Her decision led to a deep rift with the CSU and its then chairman Horst Seehofer.

Merkel also defended her selfies with migrants, which had earned her the accusation of motivating people to flee in the first place. “A friendly face doesn’t make anyone leave their home,” she said now. At the same time, it demanded openness and willingness to change from the receiving society, without which there could be no integration. “The prerequisite is a minimum of knowledge about other cultures; I have to be interested in it.”

Merkel against Söder’s rejection of the black-green coalition

Merkel also opposed statements from the CSU and parts of her own party on another point. In view of complicated coalition negotiations in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, she warned against ruling out an alliance with the Greens, as demanded by CSU leader Markus Söder. “I don’t think it’s okay that Markus Söder and others in the CSU and CDU speak so disparagingly about the Greens,” she said. Against the background of the AfD and the developments surrounding the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, Merkel called it all the more important “that those who can form a coalition do not destroy their ability to form an alliance.”

“Alliance must be maintained”

Of course, the Greens have very different views than the CDU, “and I’m wisely not a member there, but in the CDU,” said Merkel. “But the ability to form an alliance must be maintained, especially since black-green coalitions work in North Rhine-Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein and Baden-Württemberg.” These are not the most unsuccessful federal states.

Söder confirmed his rejection of a black-green alliance in the federal government after the Green party conference last weekend. A real change of direction is necessary. At the CSU party conference in October, Merz also called an alliance with the Greens currently impossible, but unlike Söder, he did not completely rule out the black-green coalition.

Questions about Merz’s suitability for chancellor remain open

Merkel did not answer the question of whether Union parliamentary group leader Merz was a suitable chancellor in “Spiegel”. “He now has to run an election campaign in which he can prove that.” Anyone who makes it as a candidate must have “some qualities that enable them to do so”. In 2002, Merkel ousted Merz as chairman of the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag. The relationship between the two has been strained ever since. From Merkel’s memoirs entitled “Freedom”, which will be published on Tuesday, the “Spiegel” quotes Merkel’s sentence about Merz: “There was a problem, right from the start: We both wanted to be boss.”

Merkel defends decision against stopping Nord Stream 2

The former Chancellor defended her decision not to stop the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project despite Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula in 2014. “I saw it as one of my tasks to get cheap gas for the German economy,” she told the magazine. “We are now seeing what consequences expensive energy prices have for our country.” She also said she would not have had a political majority to end the gas trade with Russia, “and certainly no business support.” She also considered the project to be politically useful. She wanted to stay in touch with Putin “by trying to let him share in the prosperity.”

But Merkel also emphasized that she never had any illusions about the ex-KGB officer Putin. “He always had dictatorial tendencies, and his self-righteousness upset me.” But she doesn’t believe that Putin planned to one day attack Ukraine when he took office in 2000. “This is rather a development in which we in the West also have to ask ourselves the question of whether we have always done everything right,” added the ex-Chancellor. A greater unity of the West would certainly have been better. “We weren’t as strong as we could have been.”