Scholz Slams Merz on Migration in Election Campaign Salvo
(Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz laid into Friedrich Merz during a fiery performance in parliament on Wednesday, accusing the conservative opposition leader of pursuing cheap headlines rather than helping to tackle the problems afflicting Europe’s biggest economy.
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In a debate dominated by the issue of migration, Scholz launched what was effectively an early election campaign broadside against Merz, with just over a year to go until the next scheduled national vote. His unusually spirited attack came a day after conservative lawmakers walked out of talks with the government to discuss ways of getting irregular immigration more effectively under control.
Addressing Merz sitting a few meters away across the Bundestag chamber, Scholz accused the Christian Democrat leader of being “the type of politician who thinks you have already solved the migration issue with one interview in Bild am Sonntag” newspaper.
“That’s not the reality, especially if you belong to the group of politicians who forget what they have just proposed as soon as they leave the newsroom,” Scholz said, prompting laughter and cheers from coalition lawmakers.
“Because you never intended to tackle this in the first place,” he added. “That’s bad politics.”
Opinion polls suggest frustration with the ruling coalition’s immigration and asylum policies was a key reason why forces of the extreme right and left performed strongly in two regional elections in eastern Germany this month.
It also partly explains record low voter support for the three parties in Scholz’s governing alliance, whose combined backing of around 30% is less than the main opposition CDU/CSU alliance’s tally of about 32%.
By focusing almost completely on migration in his speech Wednesday, Scholz left no doubt that the issue will dominate the forthcoming election campaign.
The German leader and members of his cabinet have sharpened their rhetoric around the topic considerably in recent weeks in a bid to convince voters they can manage immigration effectively.
Scholz said that while it’s important to be open to migrants, that “does not mean that everyone who wants to come to Germany can do so.”
“We must be able to choose who comes to Germany,” he told lawmakers. “That is why it is also important that we manage irregular migration, that we reduce the number of people who come to Germany irregularly and that we repatriate those who cannot stay.”
In something of a surprise, Scholz didn’t address the current woes of Volkswagen AG and other German carmakers struggling with the transition to electric vehicles and waning demand from China — an omission Merz seized on to assail the chancellor.
“The fact that you did not say a single word about Volkswagen in your speech this morning, and did not say a single word about the companies that are currently laying off four- and five-figure numbers of employees, shows what kind of world you live in,” he said.
Scholz’s accusation that Merz staged Tuesday’s walkout from the migration policy talks to generate media coverage was “shameless,” he added.
As CDU leader, Merz would typically be a shoe-in as the conservative chancellor candidate. However, Bavaria Premier Markus Soeder, who heads the CDU’s smaller CSU sister-party in the southern state, has also thrown his hat into the ring. Hendrik Wuest, who runs Germany’s most-populous region of North Rhine-Westphalia, is another potential conservative pick.
Merz’s main problem is that polls show he’s much less popular than both Soeder and Wuest and wouldn’t necessarily beat Scholz if Germans could pick their chancellor directly.
Before the most-recent national election in 2021, Soeder inflicted serious damage on the campaign of CDU leader Armin Laschet by initially refusing to cede the candidacy, prompting a sustained and unseemly public spat.
That helped Scholz’s Social Democrats come from behind to become the strongest party. A similar scenario, under which Soeder balks at making way for Merz, could benefit Scholz again in coming months.
Merz has said a decision on the conservative candidate will be made after the regional election on Sept. 22 in SPD-run Brandenburg, the eastern state that surrounds Berlin and is home to Scholz’s Potsdam constituency.
An Infratest Dimap poll for public broadcaster RBB published last week put the far-right AfD in first place on 27%, ahead of the SPD on 23% and the CDU on 18%. The Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht, a new far-left party founded only in January, was on 15%.
On Sept. 1, the AfD, which has support of about 17% on a national basis, secured its first regional election success in Thuringia and came second in neighboring Saxony.
--With assistance from Zoe Schneeweiss.
(Updates with Merz quotes starting in 13th paragraph.)
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