Members of the opposition CDU on Tuesday took part in a summit with coalition leaders with the stated aim of reaching a cross-party agreement on such stricter border measures. But CDU politicians broke away from those talks when it became clear, as they put it, that the coalition government was unwilling to go far enough.
“The federal government is obviously hopelessly divided internally and cannot agree on effective measures,” declared CDU leader Friedrich Merz in a post on X. The coalition, he added, “is obviously hopelessly divided internally” and “incapable of action and lacking leadership.”
The coalition’s announcement on new border measures comes ahead of a key vote in the eastern German state of Brandenburg on Sept. 22. Polls show the AfD leading the contest, beating out Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which has led the state without interruption since reunification.
Earlier this month, the AfD won an election in the eastern state of Thuringia and came in a close second behind the CDU in Saxony.
The far-right win and the dismal performance of the three parties in the coalition government — the SPD, the fiscally conservative Free Democrats and the Greens — in the election were a further embarrassment for a government that was already reeling after a historically bad result in the European election in June. In that vote, the SPD had its worst performance in a nationwide election in more than a century.
Another far-right victory in Brandenburg would only add to speculation that the coalition may not last until the next planned federal election, scheduled a year from now, particularly as the coalition government has hit a new low in approval ratings, according to the benchmark Deutschlandtrend poll.