German parliament backs election front-runner's call for tough border rules with far-right support

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's parliament on Wednesday narrowly approved a call by Chancellor Olaf Scholz's main challenger to turn back many more migrants at the country's borders, with the help of a far-right party — a move that drew strong criticism of the front-runner in the campaign for next month's election.

Opposition leader Friedrich Merz, whose party leads the polls, put migration in the spotlight following a knife attack a week ago in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg by a rejected Afghan asylum-seeker who killed a man and a 2-year-old boy. Merz wants to pile pressure on the governing parties but has drawn accusations, which he rejects, that he's breaking a consensus to shun the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD.

Merz's nonbinding motion calling for tougher migration policies passed by 348 votes to 345, with 10 abstentions, after a combination of opposition parties backed it — including 75 AfD lawmakers. Far-right lawmakers applauded the result, while the parliamentary leader of Scholz's party, Rolf Mützenich, said Merz's Union bloc had “broken out of the political center.”

What's at stake?

Germans will elect a new parliament on Feb. 23 after Scholz's three-party governing coalition collapsed. Polls show Merz's mainstream center-right Union leading with around 30% support, while Alternative for Germany is second with about 20%, and Scholz's center-left Social Democrats and their remaining coalition partners, the Greens, are further back.

Migration was already a significant election issue, alongside Germany's struggling economy. Merz apparently seeks to make the Union look decisive in forcing a tougher approach, which he hopes will blunt the appeal of the anti-immigration AfD, while making Scholz and the Greens look weak. It's unclear whether the strategy will work.

How did we get here?

The Aschaffenburg attack followed knife attacks in Mannheim and in Solingen last year in which the suspects were immigrants from Afghanistan and Syria, respectively — in the latter case, also a rejected asylum-seeker who was supposed to have left the country. In last month’s Christmas market attack in Magdeburg, the suspect is a Saudi doctor who previously had come to various regional authorities’ attention.

Merz says Germany has had a “misguided asylum and immigration policy” for a decade — since Angela Merkel, a chancellor from his own party, allowed large numbers of migrants into the country.

The outgoing government says much has changed already. It instituted temporary controls on all of Germany’s borders and says it tightened many laws, for instance to ease deportations, and points to a yet-to-be-implemented agreement on revamped EU migration rules.

Authorities say 229,751 people applied for asylum in Germany last year, a 30% decrease from the previous year. There were 18,384 deportations in the year’s first 11 months, compared with 16,430 in all of 2023.

What did Merz call for?

Merz says that if he becomes chancellor, he would order the Interior Ministry immediately to control all Germany’s borders permanently and “turn back all attempts at illegal entry without exception,” including by asylum-seekers. He says people who are supposed to leave Germany must no longer be released if picked up by police.

The conservative leader, whose Union may have to form a coalition with center-left parties for him to become chancellor, said last week that he would bring the border control proposals to parliament regardless of whose support they might attract. That implied he would accept AfD support.

Merz on Wednesday called the EU asylum policy “dysfunctional” and said that his proposals comply with EU law, arguing that Denmark, Sweden and others already do what he proposes. “We simply owe it to people in our country, and not least the victims of the acts of violence of recent months, to really make every effort now to limit illegal migration,” he said.

Wednesday's vote sent a political signal but doesn't change German law. On Friday, proposed legislation from the Union on less drastic changes to migration rules is to go to a vote. It could pass with AfD support.

What did Scholz and the far right say?

Scholz argued that Merz's calls to control borders permanently and turn back many more people are incompatible with German and EU law and would lead to the EU's most populous member undermining the bloc. “This is the answer of populists,” Scholz said.

The governing parties accused Merz of breaking promises not to work directly or indirectly with AfD, which has long urged other parties to abandon their “firewall” against it. “This is an inexcusable mistake,” Scholz said, casting doubt on whether Merz could still be trusted not to bring AfD into the government. “It is not unimportant whether one works with the extreme right — not in Germany,” Scholz said.

Merz insisted his position remains unchanged, that he did not and will not work with AfD, and would do everything to prevent radicals coming to power. He said Scholz's “hypotheses and speculation” were “malicious and disgraceful.”

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel assailed both Scholz and Merz. She accused the latter of copying her party's ideas and said that “a nonbinding motion is not a migration turnaround.” But she made clear her party was supporting Wednesday's motion despite “infantile” criticism of AfD in its text.

Weidel later called the outcome “a great day for democracy.”