CDU leader and Germany’s likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz has said his party would be open to voting with the AfD on immigration restrictions. What does Merz’s willingness for collaboration mean for immigration policy and Germany’s new citizenship law?

Merz shifts Overton window on AfD collaboration

German chancellor hopeful Friedrich Merz has told fellow CDU politicians that he will imminently submit Bundestag motions to tighten migration rules “regardless of who votes for them,” implying that the conservative party is willing to accept backup votes from the far-right AfD.

Merz’s announcement marks a shift in his party’s stance on collaboration with the AfD. Germany’s democratic parties have a long-standing agreement that they will not cooperate with extremist parties, colloquially known as the “firewall” (Brandmauer). 

According to the newspaper Stuttgarter Nachrichten, the firewall encourages mainstream parties to follow four principles; never form coalitions with extremist parties at the municipal, state or federal level, never jointly submit proposals or bills in the German parliament, never cast votes that would indirectly benefit extremist parties and never negotiate or compromise with such parties.

In the wake of Merz’s announcement, AfD chancellor hopeful Alice Weidel declared, “the firewall has fallen” on X, “The CDU and CSU have accepted my offer to vote together with the AfD in the Bundestag on the fateful issue of migration."

Merz’s calls for tighter immigration law come days after a 28-year-old Afghan asylum seeker is suspected of having stabbed two people in a park in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. One of the victims was a two-year-old boy.

“On the first day of my tenure as chancellor, I will instruct the interior ministry to impose permanent border controls with all our neighbours and refuse all attempts at illegal entry,” Merz promised in a speech following the attack.

Less than a month out from the federal election on February 23, the CDU is polling first with 30 percent and the AfD in second with 20 percent.

Almost all parties already cooperate with AfD at municipal level, study finds

Despite the firewall agreement, German politics has already seen CDU-AfD cooperation at the municipal level, particularly in eastern federal states, where the far-right party is popular. 

A recent Berlin Social Science Centre study found that between 2019 and 2024, the AfD received support from almost all mainstream parties. In cases of cooperation with the AfD, the CDU participated 62 percent of the time, FPD 50 percent, SPD 38 percent, and Greens / the Left on one of every four occasions.

These instances of cooperation cover a wide range of policies, including traffic lights, parking spaces and zebra crossings, to withholding rejected asylum seekers’ access to German language courses.

How could CDU-AfD cooperation impact the German citizenship law?

A CDU decision to cooperate with the AfD at the federal level would have a significant impact on immigration and citizenship laws put to a vote by the coming coalition government.

Following the February 23 election, a CDU minority is broadly expected to form a coalition with the SPD, which is currently polling at 16 percent. If the CDU abides by the firewall, it will depend on cooperation from the SPD, FDP or Greens to pass any new laws.

This dependency means stricter immigration policy or any rollbacks on the recent German dual citizenship law will have to be drawn up in a compromise with the SPD, one of the parties responsible for passing the dual citizenship law in June 2024.

If the CDU chooses to cooperate with the AfD, which among other policies wants to “reduce migration to the absolute minimum” and withdraw Germany from the UN’s migration and refugee pacts, it would be much easier for the conservative party to pass any new immigration and citizenship laws in their most draconian form.

Currently, the CDU manifesto promises to “stop illegal immigration”, increase the financial requirements for a residence permit, increase the residence period required for German citizenship eligibility, scrap the right to dual citizenship for non-EU nationals, increase the instances when German citizenship can be revoked and deport Syrian and Afghan nationals who are already German residents.

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