Merz' maneuver: Bitterly necessary - and extremely dangerous

t-online Merz' maneuver: Bitterly necessary - and extremely dangerous Annika Leister • 10 hours • 3 minutes reading time Merz' maneuver This bullet could land in the heart of the CDU Friedrich Merz: The CDU leader is currently undermining the AfD - and could give it a great gift in doing so. CDU candidate for chancellor Friedrich Merz is making a hard serve in asylum and security policy. For the moment, that's smart, but soon it will be an enormous problem. Friedrich Merz has woken up. The CDU's top candidate, who at times seemed as if he wanted to roll into the chancellery in a sleeping car, is finally taking action. That's a good sign in the short term - but in the long term, Merz's maneuver is associated with enormous risks. Merz was woken up by the atrocity in Aschaffenburg, in which a young Afghan attacked a kindergarten group. The attacker killed a two-year-old boy and a man who wanted to protect the children. This triggers horror and anger, the latter rightly directed at the authorities - because the Afghan was already conspicuous, known to the police and should no longer have been in Germany. Once again. Merz wants to usher in the end of the Merkel era It would have been the perfect playing field for the AfD. But even before the AfD reacted in a big way, even before AfD grandees, including Björn Höcke, emotionally disemboweled the issue at a "commemorative event" in Aschaffenburg on Friday afternoon, Merz went to the press. On Thursday, he read out a five-point plan in a moderate tone that is intended to usher in the end of the Merkel era in asylum policy. Among other things, the CDU leader promises in the likely event that he becomes chancellor: controls and rejections, including of "Dublin refugees", at all German borders; arrest warrants for those required to leave the country; consistent detention for criminals and dangerous people. A hard blow was desperately needed. People have had enough of killings that could have been prevented. The places where people lost their lives in similar circumstances have now degenerated into mere political slogans. They are heard in the news as a sign of the powerlessness of politics and the failure of the authorities: Solingen, Magdeburg, Aschaffenburg. Merz is now sending out the signal: something really has to change, I want it - absolutely. As the eternal intra-party opponent of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, he is credible in this role. He has thus significantly reduced the playing field for the AfD - and for the time being averted the danger that even more votes than before will migrate from the conservative CDU to the largely right-wing extremist party. Merz's relentlessness is a problem In the long term, however, the relentlessness of his approach poses a major problem: with his move, he is putting the gun to the head of all the other parties - and risks the bullet ending up in the heart of the Union. Merz did not make a proposal on Thursday, but set a condition: This is exactly how things have to work under me as Chancellor - or there will be no coalition. This is extremely dangerous for several reasons. Firstly, Merz is speaking from the perspective of a Chancellor, which he is not yet. Secondly, he is thereby rapidly reducing the number of his possible coalition partners in one fell swoop, if not to zero. Merz does not want to govern with the AfD - for good reasons. He has also promised this so far with such relentlessness that he cannot change his mind if he does not want to lose all credibility. The leaders of the SPD and the Greens, however, immediately stated on Thursday that Merz's proposals would not work with them. If Merz fails, one force in particular will benefit They too must maintain their credibility, and are therefore sticking to their previous arguments: it is not legally possible, and cannot be justified morally. And: Implementation would mean the cancellation of every hard-won consensus on asylum policy between the EU member states. The FDP, which would probably be the only force to go along with it, is just scraping the five percent hurdle - meaningless. Merz's rush forward is therefore dangerously short-sighted: promising success at the ballot box, but potentially catastrophic for the formation of a government immediately afterwards. Because if Merz cannot keep his promises, one force in particular is likely to benefit: the AfD.