CDU leader accuses Ukrainian refugees of ‘social tourism’
The moderate German right, until now a defender of the cordon sanitaire against the extreme right, was already showing the first signs of rapprochement with the radicals. The first, from the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Friedrich Merz, a former internal rival of Angela Merkel. The second, by the President of the European People’s Party (EPP) in the European Parliament, the Bavarian Manfred Weber, a declared friend of Silvio Berlusconi.
Olaf Scholz’s government decision to give Ukrainian refugees direct access to the country’s social services is causing “a kind of social tourism from these refugees” to Germany, Merz said in statements to the tabloid newspaper Bild.
Merz, who became president of the CDU after the conservative defeat in the German general election in 2021, entered into a dialectic “typical of the far right,” interior minister Nancy Faeser noted.
The conservative leader’s statements are reminiscent of those of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on refugees in the 2015 migration crisis. Unlike those asylum seekers, mainly Syrians, Ukrainians have direct access to German social benefits and have freedom of movement in the whole EU.
Then Germany received nearly a million refugees in just one year, leading to the vote for the AfD. Since last February, the country has already received one million Ukrainians.
The bewilderment over Merz’s ruling has gone beyond Scholz’s tripartite protests between Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals. There were also signs of bewilderment from the conservative ranks, until Merz himself apologized for his “slip”.
Weber, of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU’s sister party, was also heavily criticized not only for supporting Berlusconi in the Italian campaign, but also for now expressing his support for a future “center-right” government. the one who will lead Giorgia Meloni.
Source: La Verdad
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