Get ready for 2029.

Za "Time" from Bonn

There are miracles in politics, but rarely such as is necessary to prevent the conservative Friedrich Merz from grabbing the pole position for the formation of the Government in the early elections on February 23 and moving into the Chancellery. In that case, the eternal dilemma will remain whether Mertz became chancellor thanks to his policy or in spite of it. Ten days before the Germans rush to the polls, it seems that Mertz has brought unnecessary headaches to his Christian Democrats.

And last weekend, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of German cities - the most in Munich, where 250000 demonstrators gathered - to oppose the turn to the right and the cooperation of the Christian Democrats and the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Mertz recently decided to present his plan to curb migration in the Bundestag, after it became in Germany fashionable to discuss that topic in a concise manner and at the level of passwords. As many as 68 percent of citizens believe that the number of immigrants should be reduced.

Accordingly, Mertz lashed out from a large caliber, proposing to the parliament the closing of the borders, the rejection of anyone who does not have papers and even seeks asylum, deportation detention for all those who have to leave Germany and a ban on family immigration for a large number of refugees.

photo: ap photo

POKER GOES ALL IN

Those proposals could not lead anywhere - because they are either non-binding and the outgoing government of the social democrat Olaf Scholz would not listen to them, or they require the consent of the Bundesrat, the council of the German provinces in which the Christian Democrats cannot possibly win a majority. However, Mertz presented the proposals anyway, knowing that they could only pass with the votes of the right-wing AfD, a party whose branches are classified as extremist and are under the surveillance of the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional Order. The likely future chancellor said in poker slang that he was going "all in" - all or nothing.

In translation, the government is not doing enough to rein in uncontrolled immigration, cooperation with the AfD is not its intention, but if they vote for his proposal - there is nothing he can do about it. At the latest then, the topic of migration ate up all other topics in the pre-election campaign, which is almost a miracle. Because the German economy is in a long recession, real wages and pensions are falling due to the pandemic, inflation is eating away at purchasing power, there are wars in the world, and Donald Trump is back, who is again announcing a customs battle for the Germans...

And yet, only migration is talked about. All this under the influence of several horrific crimes committed by migrants, the last one in January, when an Afghan man attacked a group of kindergarten children in Aschaffenburg with a knife, killing a boy and a man. Before that, in December, a Saudi man - otherwise a conspiracy theorist, Islamophobe and supporter of the right - drove his car into the Christmas market in Magdeburg and killed six people. The cases are connected by the fact that both of them - like some previous perpetrators - are "known to the police", physically striking and should have been deported from Germany, but were not (see box).

photo: ap photo

LOW KNOCKS

In that tense situation, Mertz, an old-fashioned conservative, owner of a small plane he pilots and until recently an employee of the investment fund Blackrock, threw some blows below the belt, even insults, but he received a lot of them. In parliament, he asked how many more children must die before the authorities take action.

"The Greens and Social Democrats are not ready to follow the path people want in migration policy. Whoever wants to change this policy must vote for CDU and CSU", he said in an interview.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz also spoke in a harsh tone, who, despite record low popularity for the chancellor, is running another race. According to Scholz, Mertz canceled the consensus that has been valid in Germany since the defeat of the Nazis - that democratic parties do not cooperate with "undemocratic". In recent days, the chancellor has presented himself as the only barrier to the "black and blue" government, which refers to the party colors of the Christian Democrats and the AfD.

The first televised duel of these two, held on Sunday (February 9), required a strange camera angle because Mertz is almost two meters tall, and Scholz is about thirty centimeters shorter. The tone was polite, although the same tiresome game continued. Mertz swore that he would never, ever enter into a coalition with the AfD, and Scholz said that he did not trust him and warned the citizens. As if everything came down to the question of whether Merc can be trusted. In recent history, Germany has not seen such a monothematic campaign with such a banal central issue.

Public opinion polls show that even citizens do not really trust Merc, although this did not even touch the percentages predicted for the Christian Democrats. Otherwise, the further course of the duel brought the usual differences between parties of the moderate left and parties of the moderate right. Scholz is in favor of a minimum hourly wage of 15 euros gross, Mertz is against the state imposing a minimum wage. Scholz wants government borrowing for investments and higher taxes for the rich, Mertz wants neither.

Both Scholz and Mertz support Ukraine, but the former says that pensions in Germany are more important, while the latter would even send Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. They mostly agree with Donald Trump, Germany was attacked there as an export nation. If Trump starts punitive tariffs on the EU, Berlin is ready to introduce countermeasures within an hour, Scholz said.

photo: ap photo

WHO'S RUBBING HIS HANDS HERE?

When it comes to the main topic of immigration, Mertz received criticism from the ranks of two churches - Catholic and Evangelical - which is a slap in the face for a Christian Democratic leader. He was also criticized by former chancellor Angela Merkel, who at one time in the fight for the party leadership practically rushed Merz out of the party. Since his return to politics, Mertz has cast himself as the anti-Merkel, arguing that the legendary chancellor has dragged the party and all of Germany too far to the left, allowing the AfD to flourish.

In that party, they must rub their hands with satisfaction. Because they got another campaign on the only topic they deal with - "evil" migrants and the alleged flooding of Germany with foreigners. Also, they have a favorable attitude towards Russia, and the support of the new establishment in Washington, especially billionaire Elon Musk.

The chancellor candidate of the AfD, Alice Weidel, is on a pre-election tour with the same messages: "We will expel every illegal who wants to come here, and let the whole world know: Germany's borders are closed."

Weidel normally lives in a tightrope position - he is politically opposed to migration and advocates the traditional family. Privately, he is in a long-term relationship with a Swiss woman originally from Sri Lanka and lives between Switzerland and Germany.

GETTING STRONGER AND STRONGER

The dilemma of how to deal with the AfD is as old as the party itself. Founded as a liberal-conservative anti-euro party in 2014, the AfD has had several right-wing turns, bringing increasingly radical rightists to the fore.

Extremists rule especially in the east, in the former GDR, where the AfD has long been the strongest party. There is the classic fascist Björn Hecke, head of the Thuringia branch of the party, who uses the vocabulary of Hitler's Nazis in his performances and pamphlets he writes. All this was too much even for the French right-winger Marine Le Pen, so the AfD stormed out of the joint parliamentary group in the European Parliament.

But far from it, there are so many racists in Germany who choose AfD because they hate everything that is not German. That party is still an expression of "anti-establishment protest" that brings together disgruntled workers, although there is absolutely nothing for the little man in their party program. They are against stronger taxation of the rich and social benefits.

As the famous philosopher Richard David Precht says, the AfD is fishing in an ever-growing pool of people who cannot find their way in a time of general individualization, the rush of "identity" as the supreme criterion, and a world that seems to be spinning faster and faster.

In this state, says Precht, right-wingers offer simple but paradoxical answers, which few seem to notice. On the one hand, the state will not be their tutor who "takes away their freedom" - for example, during a pandemic or prescribes the so-called gender sensitive language. On the other hand, they really want that country to prescribe conservative and patriarchal values ​​and to be firm and restore order.

The established German parties did not find an answer. Those around the AfD are building a sanitary cordon, describing the party as undemocratic or neo-Nazi. All other parties refuse to cooperate with the AfD, especially entering a coalition at the federal or provincial level. But as if such a fixation on them gives these right-wingers the aura of forbidden fruit and the only ones who "are allowed to tell" the truth and oppose the "elite from Berlin". That's how AfD got stronger and stronger, and it will be like that after these elections.

ANATOMY OF THE BUNDESTAG

All the latest polls see the Christian Democrats in the clear lead with 30 percent of the vote, while the AfD gets an average of 21 percent. The failed ruling parties, the Social Democrats and the Greens, can count on 16 and 14 percent, respectively.

There are three other parties dancing around the census. The Left is the most likely to be in the Bundestag, the Alliance of Sarah Wagenknecht, a fugitive leftist trying her hand at conservative socialism, is somewhat less so. The third party that was in power until recently, the Liberals, has the least chance.

It is these small parties that will shape the anatomy of the Bundestag and determine Friedrich Merz's room for maneuver when he receives the mandate to form a government. Unless a miracle happens, it will be enough for Merz to get the Social Democrats or the Greens as junior partners, since he categorically claims that power with the AfD is out of the question.

With the maneuvers of the last few days, Mertz has made future talks with moderately left-wing parties more difficult, and has put an additional burden on himself - he claims that he is a maher, a man who will act immediately, suppress migration, strengthen the economy and the army. But difficult negotiations await him on everything. Well, four difficult years in power in a world that is less and less favorable to the German export economy and with right-wingers breathing down his neck.

Jens Span, one of the leading Christian Democratic politicians and former health minister under Merkel, said in a talk show that he often thinks more about the 2029 elections than the ones that are just ahead.

"If the next government, whoever leads it and appoints the chancellor, does not bring about the progress that people feel on the topics of irregular migration and economic growth (...) but only lazy compromises just to get something written in the coalition agreement - then we will have the Austrian and French situation here," said Span.

A state, namely, in which it is no longer possible to govern without the radical right. And Germany already had that once.

Record number of refugees

There are officially about 3,5 million refugees in Germany, which is a record since the 1,2s, when Germans from other countries were deported to post-war West Germany, who were treated as refugees. The current number also includes about 745000 million Ukrainians who, according to the European Union's ad hoc rule, do not have to go through the asylum process, but automatically receive temporary protection while the Russian aggression continues. The annual number of asylum applications fell from a record 2016 (in 122000) to 2020 (in 350000, during the pandemic), but then increased. In the last two years, between 250000 and 220000 people sought asylum. The outgoing government of Olaf Scholz also made moves to limit migration, including (pointless) border checks, and slightly increased the number of deportations. However, over XNUMX immigrants are still staying in Germany even though their asylum application has been rejected and they should leave.

Statistics show that the majority of asylum seekers (excluding those from Ukraine) still come from Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey. About a third are children up to 15 years of age. Over 40 percent are young people under the age of 34, and in that group there are about five times more men than women. Less than half of the refugees in Germany work, but the chance that they are employed increases with the length of their stay. For example, among the men who came in a big wave in 2015 and 2016, 86 percent are employed, which is higher than the German average. The federal state and the provinces annually allocate around 35 billion euros to care for refugees, social assistance, housing, integration and language courses.