Bundestag election campaign: turning point in the Bundestag: As is going on in the AfD drama

Some say that the fire wall for the AfD had fallen. The others vehemently deny this. However, there may be no doubt about one after the tuning of the tightening of migration policy in the Bundestag: The fact that the Union has enforced its five-point plan with the help of the AfD will not only determine the remaining four weeks in the Bundestag election campaign. It will also have an impact for the time afterwards, the extent of which cannot yet be estimated.

January 29, 2025 was “probably a very important day in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the ARD program “Maischberger” in the evening. The Union had announced a consensus that the whole post -war history had existed among the Democrats in Germany. “The consensus, namely that there is no collaboration between the democratic parties with the extreme right. Today it happened.”

This denies Union Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz. On the subject of collaboration with the AfD, he says: “AfD people can now triumph as they want, they will not exist.” However, he was also no longer willing to “let a minority dissuade from a minority to bring about votes that are correct in the matter.”

Who won, who lost?

On paper, the Union is the winner of the day. It has brought her five-point plan to tighten the irregular migration, which, among other things, provides for more rejections by asylum seekers at the German borders, against the will of the minority government of the SPD and the Greens with a short majority by the Bundestag. The high price: The AfD was the first majority procurer. And what for? The application does nothing at first. The government is not bound by this.

The actual winner is therefore different: the AfD. It broke the complete exclusion by the other parties in the Bundestag and is now speaking of the beginning of a “new era”.

Is that going on with the AfD?

There is a first answer to this question this Friday. Then it is not just an application with an appeal character, but a law with concrete regulations on the containment of migration. And the Union does not make any institutions to refrain from the scandal in the Bundestag. According to the design, the CDU and CSU want to reintroduce “the word limitation of immigration” to the Residence Act, as Merz said in the ARD. “Who could be against it?”

The CDU boss offered SPD and Greens negotiations for approval, but the echo failed to materialize for the time being. The AfD has already signaled again – as well as FDP and BSW. So there could be a majority beyond the government coalition and with the AfD. And this time she counts: The decision would result in concrete changes – a new dimension.

What does that mean for the further election campaign?

Paths from the economic crisis, Ukraine aid, tax concepts – so far, these have been the most important topics in the election campaign. Now two others are at the top and overlap everything else: how hard should Germany areolate against irregular migration? And how do the other parties deal with the AfD, which is classified by the protection of the constitution as partly right -wing extremist, but in the surveys comes to a fifth of the votes.

The SPD and the Greens are more on the subject of migration on the defensive and above all see a problem with the implementation of existing measures. The SPD stagnating in the surveys between 14 and 17 percent now wants to score with warnings about a black and blue coalition.

Union Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz “deliberately accepted” that the AfD agrees to its application, although he had long assured the opposite, said Scholz in the ARD. “And that’s why I think I can no longer trust him.” For him, the Bundestag election is now about preventing a majority of the Union and AfD.

What does this mean for government formation after the election?

Merz stops against it and assures that a coalition with the AfD is out of the question for him. The day after the election, votes for the AfD for the goal of a change of policy were “no longer worth anything”. But what does the scandal in the Bundestag mean for working between the so -called parties in the middle, i.e. CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens and FDP?

Despite the bright outrage, there was no cancellation of black and green from the Greens’ fraction management. The chairman of the Green Youth, Jakob Blasel, on the other hand, told the mirror, as long as Merz was at the top, “the Greens are not allowed to enter into a coalition with the CDU and CSU”.