Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Friedrich Merz has categorically ruled out any possible deal with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is now recovering slightly in the polls after a downward trend of the past few years. .
“As long as I am the leader of the CDU, there will be no joint work with this party. This is xenophobic and anti-Semitic, we have nothing to do with these people,” Merz said in statements on the ZDF network on June 5.
Mertz, who was elected in late 2021 as the leader of what is now Germany’s main opposition formation, attributes the AfD’s rise in the polls to the weakness of the current governing 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 said.
For his part, Chancellor Olaf Scholz linked the AfD’s potential electoral growth to a trend in other countries, where data on “bad mood parties” have also improved in the context of uncertainties such as the coronavirus, the war in Ukraine and climate change.
Source: El Diario
