For weeks, Friedrich Merz appeared to be cruising towards his life-long dream of becoming Germany’s chancellor by focusing on a pro-business pitch to revive Europe’s largest economy.
Then he decided to play with fire. After an Afghan asylum seeker fatally stabbed a toddler and an adult in Bavaria last month, the leader of the Christian Democrats launched a legislative offensive on migration.
He tried to strong-arm the ruling Social Democrats and Greens into pushing through measures tightening borders and asylum rules. With only three weeks until a federal election, his SPD and Green opponents balked. But the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) took him at his word. After hours of heated debate, a non-binding motion on migration passed with the AfD’s backing — the first time in the country’s postwar history that a majority emerged with the help of the far right in the Bundestag. A German taboo had been broken.