Speaking at an event in Berlin on Wednesday, Merz called on German society as a whole to confront what he described as extremism “forcefully making its way into the country’s parliaments.”
“Anyone who casts their vote for the AfD is playing the extremists’ game and undermining credibility,” Merz said. “In any case, this is incompatible with the values of my party, the CDU.”
The comments followed the election of a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as president of the state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt, a day after the far-left Left Party won in Berlin’s state election on September 20.
In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD won the September 6 state election but fell three seats short of the absolute majority sought by candidate Ulrich Siegmund. Founded in 2013 as a eurosceptic movement, the AfD has since become a dominant political force in much of eastern Germany, winning over voters with increasingly hardline opposition to immigration after about a million people fled to Germany in 2015, many from war-torn Syria. Most traditional parties have pledged not to enter coalitions with the AfD.
In Berlin, the far-left Left Party’s victory marked another defeat for Merz’s Christian Democrats. Lead candidate Elif Eralp campaigned on the soaring cost of housing in the German capital and immediately promised to nationalise private housing associations that account for a large share of the city’s housing stock. The result, which roughly doubled the party’s previous score, could see her become the first mayor of Berlin from the Left Party, which grew out of the former East German communist party.