The German parliament narrowly rejected on Friday an opposition-sponsored bill calling for tougher rules on migration that risked becoming the first draft legislation to pass thanks to a far-right party. It became a focus of a controversy about the attitude toward the far right of the front-runner in Germany’s upcoming election.
Opposition leader and front-runner Friedrich Merz has put demands for a more restrictive approach to migration at the center of his campaign for the Feb. 23 election since a deadly knife attack last week by a rejected asylum-seeker.
The way he has done so prompted opponents to accuse him of breaking a taboo and endangering mainstream parties' "firewall" against the far-right Alternative for Germany. He insists his position is unchanged and that he didn't and won't work with the party.
Posted by John3262005
4 Comments
Daytondailynews is not even availbable in the EU lol
But in this sub there are three ways to make a living in this business: Be first, be smarter or cheat. And I don’t cheat.
Ein dreifaches Hurrah für die FDGO !ping GER
>The remaining decency in the right half of the Bundestag was apparently in the FDP parliamentary group. Of its 90 MPs, two voted no on Friday: Anikó Glogowski-Merten and Ulrich Lechte. Lechte was one of the two Liberals who did not vote in favour of the resolution on Wednesday. Glogowski-Merten also justified her no vote on Wednesday, saying that the day had shown that the CDU/CSU parliamentary group was prepared to accept majorities with parliamentary groups on the far right. ‘This goes against the values I stand for,’ Glogowski-Merten wrote [in a personal statement on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1159552502839230). ‘The history of our country has taught us that we must not make joint decisions with extremists. (…) Freedom needs responsibility’.
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>5 other FDP MPs abstained and 16 did not vote at all on Friday. These included former Justice Minister Marco Buschmann, Ria Schröder and Konstantin Kuhle. This can be seen from the voting list published on bundestag.de.
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>In the vote on Wednesday, in which a black-brown-yellow alliance had secured the majority, only two Liberals had abstained, while eight others had not cast a vote. This turnaround within the Liberals alone was enough to cause the law to fail.
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>The voting behaviour of all parliamentarians [can be viewed here](https://www.bundestag.de/parlament/plenum/abstimmung/abstimmung?id=946).
https://taz.de/-Bundestagsdebatte-im-Live-Ticker-/!6066358/
Why would anyone vote for Merz? He doesn’t even have his own party under control so how is he going to push for any migration reform in a coalition? He should just resign already.