German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has expressed openness to cooperation with parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz on migration. The CDU leader had previously offered him a reshuffle of migration policy – if necessary without the ‘traffic light partners’.
Scholz and Merz met that morning in the Chancellery in Berlin and discussed the consequences of the knife attack in Solingen. The government and the opposition are well advised to always work together, the Chancellor said during an election campaign in Jena. “We will do everything in any case so that we can determine more and more good rules together in Germany.”
But it is just as good to do this according to the principles that we have adopted: “Our international treaties apply. The rules of the European Union apply. What our basic law tells us applies. And then many practical suggestions are welcome.”
Merz flirts with breaking the coalition
Merz said after the meeting with Scholz that the Union and the SPD would come together to make the FDP and the Greens obsolete and thus implement appropriate legal changes. The proposal amounts to a call for a break in the coalition.
The attack in Solingen fuels the asylum debate:
The 2021 coalition agreement states the following about the cooperation between the three traffic light partners: “The coalition factions vote uniformly in the German Bundestag and in all committees it appoints. This also applies to questions that do not form part of the agreed policy. Changing majorities are excluded.”
The CDU wants to continue without taboos
Only in ethical questions such as euthanasia is it usually agreed to lift the faction requirement. It is unlikely that the Greens and the FDP will get involved in a central political issue such as migration policy. However, Merz referred to the policy-making authority of the Chancellor and emphasized that the SPD and the Union together made up 403 of the 733 members of the Bundestag and thus had a clear absolute majority in parliament.
“This is emphatically not a request to be included in a coalition. We do not want to become part of the government here,” Merz stressed. But there is an urgent need for action without taboos. “The Chancellor is now losing his own country. He is losing confidence.”
The terrorist attack has rekindled the debate
In the suspected Islamic attack in Solingen, an attacker killed three people with a knife and injured eight others at a city festival on Friday evening. The suspected perpetrator is 26-year-old Syrian Issa Al H., who is in custody. The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office is investigating him for murder and on suspicion of membership of the terrorist militia Islamic State (IS).
They claimed responsibility for the crime and also published a video of a masked man who was supposed to be the perpetrator. The alleged perpetrator was supposed to be deported to Bulgaria last year, but that failed.
Source: Krone
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
