By Thomas Escritt and Andreas Rinke
BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany’s mainstream parties were locked in talks on Friday in an attempt to avert the possibility of a law passing thanks to far-right support for the first time in its post-war history.
The Bundestag was set to debate and vote on a law to tighten immigration controls that had been moved by conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz.
Merz, whose bloc leads in polls ahead of a Feb. 23 election, says tightening migration controls is a necessary response to a series of high-profile killings in public spaces by people with an immigrant background.
But moments before the debate was due to start at 11:00 a.m. local time (1000 GMT), the conservatives asked for an adjournment.
Legislators said Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, their Green coalition partners and the liberal Free Democrats, their former partners, were seeking to stop the vote from happening by referring it back to committees.
A law passing thanks to votes from the far-right Alternative for Germany would be symbolically important in Germany in that it would break a taboo among mainstream parties about not cooperating with the far-right.
The Free Democrats, who also support tightening migration rules, said they were seeking a way of getting the law passed without relying on the AfD.
“It depends entirely on the SPD and Greens to prepare the way for a democratic majority to pass this important law,” said senior FDP legislator Benjamin Duerr.
Scholz warned in a podcast for Die Zeit newspaper that Germany risked following Austria into a world where the far-right Freedom Party becomes the dominant political force.
“Everyone said they wouldn’t join with the Freedom Party,” he said. “And now we might get a Freedom Party chancellor.”
Earlier in the week, Germany’s two main churches also came out against the law, saying it would not have prevented a stabbing attack in Bavaria or a car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg – an embarrassment for Merz’s Christian Democrats.
Even party colleagues have doubts.
“The narrative for the SPD and Greens is obvious: for the first time since the 1933 enabling law (which brought Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler to power), there is a majority composed of right radicals, conservatives and liberals in a German parliament. Dreadful!” one former conservative legislator told Reuters after the non-binding motion passed.
A DeutschlandTrend poll for public television found that 67% of voters backed permanent border controls, including more than half of the Social Democrats’ supporters.
Merz says it would be the government’s fault if, because of their opposition, a law he deems necessary passes thanks to the backing of the AfD, currently second in polls.
“We are always ready to discuss the draft law,” Merz told Bild newspaper. “This is about our country, not party political tactics.”
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Alex Richardson)
