German Conservatives Embrace Hard Line on Migrants to Combat AfD

The German conservative in pole position to become the next chancellor is toughening his position on migration as he tries to fend off the threat of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Friedrich Merz is heading into a meeting with his Bavarian partners on Wednesday promising to make it harder to obtain a passport and easier to strip citizenship from foreign-born Germans who commit serious crimes. He also wants to cut benefits payments in Europe’s biggest economy by as much as 50 billion euros ($52 billion).

Merz’s conservative bloc has enjoyed a robust lead of more than 10 percentage points over its rivals for most of the last year, making him the strong favorite to take power after next month’s election.

But the emergence of a possible far-right government in Austria and creeping gains for the AfD in Germany are sending jitters through the ranks of Merz’s Christian Democrats and their smaller Bavarian sister party.

German citizens “are more conservative than ever,” Markus Soeder, head of the Bavarian group said Monday at a meeting of conservative lawmakers. He called for a “fundamental policy change” in Germany and said that the fight against illegal migration would be a main topic of his party’s election campaign.

“Anyone who already has citizenship but is in favor of a caliphate must have it revoked and leave the country,” said Soeder, who is also the Bavarian state premier, in reference to demands made last year by a group of Islamists in Hamburg. Merz and Soeder will meet with CSU officials on Wednesday at a monastery in the Bavarian town of Seeon to discuss their campaign strategy ahead of the Feb. 23 vote.

In an interview with Welt am Sonntag over the weekend, Merz had pledged to repeal a law passed by Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz which makes it easier for migrants to obtain dual citizenship. He also insisted that German authorities should have the right to revoke the citizenship of migrants who commit serious crimes, after a Saudi refugee who’d been granted asylum several years ago drove his car into a Christmas market on Dec. 20, killing six people.

{snip}