2023-06-16 16:28:07
The leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Friedrich Merz, has categorically ruled out any possible pact with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which polls are now giving a slight rebound after a downward trend for these last few years.
“As long as I am the leader of the CDU, there will be no joint work with this party. He is xenophobic and anti-Semitic, we have nothing to do with these people ”, Merz sentenced in statements to the ZDF chain on June 5.
Merz, elected at the end of 2021 as the leader of what is now the main opposition formation in Germany, has attributed the growth of the AfD in polls to the weakness of the current government coalition, led by the Social Democratic Party (SPD). . “If we had a government that worked well in practical and political terms, the AfD would not be at 18 percent,” he pointed out.
For his part, the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has linked the potential electoral growth of the AfD to the trend in other countries, where the “bad mood parties” have also improved in a context of uncertainty such as the coronavirus, the war in Ukraine and climate change.
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