The leader of the CDU-CSU party in Germany, which has just emerged on top of nationwide elections, has announced he intends to continue to push for tighter control over immigration both in Germany and around Europe. This stance is in perfect keeping with the party’s campaigns, and is in step with the far-right AfD party, which posted its own historic result, but it potentially poses a challenge for the keenly business- and economy-minded future chancellor.
Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU-CSU, also known as the Christian Democrats, has long been known as a hardliner on immigration. Throughout his campaign in the run-up to elections in February, he emphasized a need for stricter control over Germany’s borders, particularly as regards irregular migration and asylum seekers.
The Christian Democrats came out of the elections the clear leader, though without the majority needed to form a government alone. As a result they will likely partner in a coalitions with the Social Democrats, who lead the current coalition and suffered a humiliating defeat this time around, coming in third place. In between them is the stridently anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party. They have vanishingly little chance of making it into any coalition, however, as the other parties have long sworn against working with them.
Immigration was one of the driving issues in Germany, amid a charged political atmosphere fuelled by far-right rhetoric and a number of attacks linked to immigrants. While the AfD are unlikely to join the government, their concerns over immigration will likely set the tone – at least tacitly – for Friedrich Merz, likely the country’s next chancellor.
Germany has already implemented stricter border controls in recent years, including tightening border controls with neighboring countries – a move that runs counter to the EU’s Schengen zone of free movement – as well as announcing sped-up deportation procedures and increasingly turning away asylum seekers at the border, something that likely violates international refugee conventions. Nonetheless, this has not been enough to placate vast swathes of the German political establishment, who are calling for more to be done to reduce immigration. Not least of them being the AfD and their voters.
Unsurprisingly, Friedrich Merz has stated clearly that he intends to pursue a more restrictive immigration agenda. While this is perfectly in step with his own background and the political dictats of the moment, it does run counter to what is largely believed to be Merz’s primary concern: the economy. Merz, who has a long-standing and unusually close relationship with the business and finance worlds, will be aware that the country faces historic labor shortages, particularly in light of an ageing native workforce. It appears all but impossible to maintain economic growth without the entry of hundreds of thousands of labor migrants in the next years.
German policymakers have long been aware of this problem, and have in recent years introduced a raft of measures designed to make it easier for people to come work and settle in Germany. There are of course crucial differences between asylum seekers and labor migrants, and the processes by which they may reach Germany, but in an atmosphere so charged over the concept of immigration overall, it is is not clear how the keenly economy-minded Merz will pursue a growth strategy while attempting to maintain his anti-immigration stance.