“Brandwall” to the AfD: What is it all about?

Union Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz (CDU) announced applications to tighten migration policy in the Bundestag after the fatal knife attack of Aschaffenburg – under assumption that the AfD also agrees. The AfD, on the other hand, has now reinforced it for working with the Union and is already cheering over the end of the “Brandwall.” What about the term and what could happen?

Union Chancellor candidate and faction leader Friedrich Merz (CDU) has announced that he wants to submit suggestions for sharper rules in migration policy. “And we will bring them in, regardless of who agrees,” he said. “I don’t look on the right and not on the left. I just look straight on in these questions.” So he accepts the AfD approval.

However, it is open whether it will come at all, because according to the rules of procedure of the Bundestag, there are usually three consultations before a final vote for applications, as with bills. The procedure can be shortened with a two -thirds majority. Before the Bundestag election, only two plenary days in February are scheduled after this meeting week.

Anyone who used the term in this context is difficult to understand, but as early as 2014-a year after the party was founded, the party, which was particularly critical of the euro-used him by the then CSU general secretary Andreas Scheuer. The AfD moved into a state parliament for the first time in Saxony, and Scheuer said about the question of collaboration, there was a “fire wall” on this point. The term was later also used by other parties to exclude cooperation. In 2018, for example after the riots of Chemnitz, Greens politician Cem Özdemir said that a “fire wall should be built towards AfD”.

Merz had told the “Spiegel” in December 2021: “With me there will be a fire wall for the AfD.” Last autumn, when Saxony Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) recommended that the state elections in the east to refrain from the term “fire wall” because the party uses him for himself and presented itself as a martyr, said Merz: “The word Brand wall has never been part of our language.

The AfD keeps the word to put the word to put pressure on the Union, argues with its election successes and that against this background the strict demarcation will not be held out for long.

It is your official decision. At their party congress in Hamburg 2018, the Christian Democrats stated: “The CDU in Germany rejects coalitions and similar forms of cooperation with both the Left Party and the alternative for Germany.” Merz had recently confirmed in the ARD “Daily topics”: “We do not work with a party that is xenophobic, which is anti-Semitic, the right-wing radicals in their ranks, which holds criminals in their ranks, a party that flirts with Russia and wants to leave NATO and the European Union. ” He stands for it with his word, hold that and make his fate as party chairman to this answer.

Almost two thirds of the respondents (65 percent) in the current ZDF “political barometer” find it correct that the CDU basically rejects political cooperation with the AfD, 32 percent do not find it correct. The CDU/CSU supporters support the strict demarcation course with a large majority of 73 percent.

It is also about a question of definition. What does cooperation actually mean? In the ZDF interview in 2023, Merz had drawn a dividing line between local politics and the levels. Cooperation relates to legislative bodies, he said and called the state parliament, the Bundestag and the EU Parliament. If a district administrator or mayor of the AfD is elected at the local level, it naturally to search for ways to continue working in the city.

The Berlin Science Center (WZB) had come to the conclusion in a study published last September on voting behavior in East German local parliaments that there are cooperation with the AfD, but not on a large scale. More than 2400 sessions of parliaments in counties and independent cities were examined from mid -2019 to mid -2024 in all East German federal states. The AfD therefore submitted 2348 applications and received no support in around 80 percent of the cases. In around 20 percent (484 cases) it was demonstrated that the content was cooperated with the AfD.