Bundestag election campaign: Migration vote leads to scandal-AfD celebrates

A week after the knife attack of Aschaffenburg, the Union, with votes from the AfD, enforced a Bundestag decision for a harder migration course – and thus ensured an unprecedented scandal. It should also significantly determine the further election campaign by February 23. What this day will mean for government formation after the election is still open.

The SPD and Greens accused the Union of leaving the political center and blamed CDU boss Friedrich Merz personally. After such a vote, it should not be “easy to go to the agenda”, said SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich.

Merz offered new negotiations and assured that “no other majorities than those in the democratic center of our parliament” assumed. He added: “If there was such a majority here today, I regret that.”

AfD sees the beginning of a “new era”

The AfD faction spoke of a historical moment. “Mr. Merz, you have helped bring it out,” said group manager Bernd Baumann to the CDU boss. “Now and here a new era begins. Now something new begins. And that is what we lead, that leads the new forces, these are the forces from the AfD.” The Bundestag had previously approved a union application that has previously agreed to reject more rejections provides for asylum seekers to the German borders. For the application, 187 MPs of the Union, 75 AfD MPs and 80 members of the FDP parliamentary group and 6 without a faction voted. Together there are 348 votes. 344 MPs were against it, ten contained. The application has no binding effect, but the decision is a high symbolic power.

The AfD applauded after the announcement of the voting result. SPD, Greens voted with no, as well as the group DIE LINKE. The BSW abstained. A second application by the Union with comprehensive reform proposals for a restrictive migration policy and additional powers of the security authorities have been rejected. Both applications are not legally binding.

Mützenich: “Not so easy to go to the agenda”

The session was interrupted after the vote. In the previous debate, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Merz had a violent exchange of blows, especially about dealing with the AfD. The SPD candidate for chancellor Scholz accused Merz to give up the clear demarcation to extremely right parties. “You accept the support of the AfD for your illegal proposals,” he said to the opposition leader in his government declaration.

Scholz also suspected that the Union could enter into a coalition with the AfD after the election. Merz rejected this in his response to the Chancellor as “low -prone” and “Infam”. “I will do anything to prevent that.” The CDU boss nevertheless confirmed that he accepted the approval of the AfD for the enforcement of his suggestions for migration. He preferred to do so than “further watch how people in our country continue to threaten, injure and murder”.

Weidel calls the government declaration “outrageous”

The AfD chairman Alice Weidel turned against both Scholz and Merz. The government declaration called it “tremendously” and accused Scholz “authoritarian” thinking. “This is democracy without a people, that’s democracy without voters,” she said. The government’s migration policy called it a “politically motivated loss of control”. The so -called “fire wall” against the AfD is a lever to exclude the will of the voters.

The Union accused Weidel of depriving the suggestions to contain the migration from the AfD. As meeting director Katrin Göring-Eckardt, the majority for the application for rejections had announced and congratulated the AfD deputies.

To Aschaffenburg only two campaign topics

The starting point for the current migration debate was the knife attack by Aschaffenburg with two deaths, which completely changed the Bundestag election campaign 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, and seriously injured others. The 28 -year -old suspect was subject to departure.

Since then, the election campaign has mostly argued about migration and dealing with the AfD. The Union is reinforced by the case in its demand for a massive tightening of the procedure against irregular migration. Merz said in the Bundestag that the victims were guilty. The red-green minority government sees the problem more when implementing the existing rules by the responsible authorities. She considers the Union’s proposals to be illegal.

Scholz: “A Federal Chancellor must not be a gambler”

Scholz dismissed Merz because he presented plans that contradict the Basic Law and EU law. “There are limits that you shouldn’t exceed as a statesman,” he said. “Politics in our country is not a poker game. The cohesion of Europe is not a game. And a German Chancellor must not be a gambler. In the worst case, he decides on war or peace.”

Merz clearly rejected the allegation of illegality. The EU contract article 72 gives national law priority in the event of a risk to public security and order, he said. “How many children still have to become victims of such violent acts before they also believe that this is a risk to public security and order?” He asked. In addition, Article 16a of the Basic Law explicitly regulated that the fundamental right to asylum could not rely on who entered an EU member state or a country in which the European Convention on Human Rights applies.

Scholz: Merz has terminated the basic consensus of the Democrats

The exchange of blows on the topic of AfD became even sharper. The Union tolerates the support of those “fighting our democracy who despise our united Europe, who have been poisoning the climate in our country for years,” said Scholz. This is an “unforgivable mistake”. Since the foundation of the Federal Republic over 75 years ago, there has always been a clear consensus of all democrats not to do a common cause with extreme right, said Scholz. “You have terminated this basic consensus in our republic in the affect,” the Chancellor accused his challenger.

Merz pointed out that all attempts to come with the SPD and the Greens have failed in the past three years. Now he wants to “do upright ganges what is inevitable in the matter”. For this he also accepts pictures of cheering AfD MPs, even if they will be “unbearable”.

Churches fear “massive damage” for democracy

The MPs of the victims of Aschaffenburg intended before the debate began. Bundestag President Bärbel Bas warned a fair discussion. Immediately before the vote, the two large churches opposed the Union course with unusually sharp words. The factions would have agreed with the dissolution of the traffic light coalition not to bring about votes in which the voices of the AfD are decisive, according to a joint statement by the Berlin representatives of the Catholic bishops and the council of the Evangelical Church. “We fear that German democracy will be massive if this political promise is abandoned.”

Demonstration in front of the CDU headquarters

In the evening, several hundred people demonstrated against the joint coordination of the Union and AfD for a sharper migration policy in the Bundestag in the evening. Amnesty International, pier and other organizations had called for the rally under the motto “Brandwall instead of arson”. The police initially spoke of around 650 participants.