Jan. 29, 2025 |

‘The firewall’ falls in Berlin. On January 29, the German Bundestag passed a nonbinding motion aimed at cutting off undocumented immigration at the country’s land borders. The proposal, drafted by the center-right Christian Democrats, passed by only three votes, and it might never become law. Germany is holding national elections on February 23, and if the Christian Democrats and their right-wing allies don’t win, the new cabinet is unlikely to adopt the measures.

And yet German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said that the Christian Democrats’ leader, Friedrich Merz, had made an “unforgivable mistake” and had crossed “boundaries that a statesman should not overstep.”

The offense? To pass the motion, Merz relied on votes from the Alternative für Deutschland, a populist-right party with extensive ties to Germany’s far right. For many years, all of Germany’s mainstream parties had agreed not to work with the AfD, either in sponsoring legislation or including them in a governing coalition—a consensus they’ve referred to as der Brandmauer, or “the firewall.” But the vote on the immigration motion ended it.

Why did the Christian Democrats do this?

Last March, just after AfD became the second-most popular party in Germany, Liana Fix looked at the reasons for their rise—and saw two things that likely influenced the Christian Democrats.

One is that German public opinion on immigration has been consistently moving toward the views of the AfD, which has focused on the issue for more than a decade. Polls showed that 66 percent of Germans supported Merz’s plans—including 56 percent of the voters for Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats.

The second thing is the transformation of German politics in the context of an ongoing shift across Europe. The European political landscape is now fragmenting, as small new parties emerge on the right and left. One major effect is to leave traditional center-right parties like the Christian Democrats with increasingly fewer options for partners to form majority governments or pass legislation—meaning that working with the AfD would begin to look less like a taboo and more like practical politics.

Michael Bluhm

Daniel Brosch