By Thomas Escritt and Andreas Rinke
BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany’s parliament faced the possibility of passing a law due to far-right support for the first time in post-war history, after last-minute talks to find a compromise to avert the vote to tighten immigration controls appeared to have failed.
The Bundestag was expected to debate and vote on the law that had been moved by conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz after the conclusion of the talks, which were continuing on Friday afternoon.
Merz, whose bloc leads in polls ahead of a Feb. 23 election, says tightening migration controls is a necessary response to a series of high-profile killings in public spaces by people with an immigrant background.
On Wednesday, his non-binding motion calling for the reintroduction of border controls was passed over the objections of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s minority government due to votes from the far-right Alternative for Germany, in what was widely seen as a watershed victory for the party.
A law passing due to AfD votes would be symbolically important in Germany in that it would break a taboo among mainstream parties about not breaking a “firewall” by cooperating with the far-right.
Scholz’s Social Democrats and their Green coalition partners are refusing to back measures, including restrictions on family reunification and the possibility of turning asylum seekers away at borders, saying they contravene European law and would not help prevent violence.
Merz accused the two parties – third and fourth in the polls – of seeking to push his party into the second-placed AfD’s arms with their refusal in the hope of electoral advantage.
“Is this election reason enough for you not to take a decision?” he asked. “You will not push us into that party’s vicinity,” he added, pointing to the AfD benches, to jeers from government legislators.
A DeutschlandTrend poll for public television found that 67% of voters backed permanent border controls, including more than half of the Social Democrats’ supporters. It is still too early to see the polling impact of Wednesday’s AfD-backed motions, which sent a shockwave through the political class.
Scholz warned in a podcast for Die Zeit newspaper that Germany risked following Austria into a world where the far-right Freedom Party becomes the dominant political force.
“You must rebuild the firewall,” senior SPD legislator Rolf Muetzenich told Merz in parliament.
Earlier, Germany’s two main churches came out against the law, saying it would not have prevented a stabbing attack in Bavaria or a car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg – an embarrassment for Merz’s Christian Democrats.
A Holocaust survivor returned his German state medal, while former Chancellor Angela Merkel made a rare intervention to criticise her successor as party leader.
“The narrative for the SPD and Greens is obvious: for the first time since the 1933 enabling law (which brought Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler to power), there is a majority composed of right radicals, conservatives and liberals in a German parliament. Dreadful!” one former conservative legislator told Reuters after the non-binding motion passed.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Alex Richardson and Philippa Flethcer)
