Between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Angela Merkel, the break is complete. Monday December 11, two years almost to the day after the former German chancellor left power, the party of which she was president from 2000 to 2018 revealed the broad outlines of its new “fundamental program”. Entitled “Living in Freedom”, this 71-page document anchors the CDU clearly on the right, breaking with the very centrist positioning which it held during the time of Mr.me Merkel.
This is particularly the case on immigration. By coming out in favor of outsourcing asylum procedures to third countries, the CDU is adopting an idea defended by conservative leaders who want to be the most firm in this area, such as the British Rishi Sunak or the Italian Giorgia Meloni. Eight years after M’s decisionme Merkel to welcome hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing their war-torn country, the turnaround is spectacular. At the time, the Chancellor had made Germany the European country most open to asylum seekers. From now on, the CDU advocates an ultra-restrictive migration policy which aligns it with the positions of the hardest right-wing parties. In her new program, she also calls for a “capping” of the number of migrants that can be received each year in Europe and Germany. Supported for a long time by the right wing of the party, this idea has always been opposed by Mr.me Merkel.
Another sign of the CDU’s desire to display a resolutely conservative profile: the celebration of the Leitkultur (“reference culture”). “All those who want to live here must unreservedly recognize our culture of reference,” is written on the first page of his new program. The notion of Leitkultur has very political connotations: it was brandished in 2000 by Friedrich Merz, then president of the CDU group in the Bundestag, as a counter-model to multiculturalism, sparking passionate debates in the country at the time. That it is being brought back to the forefront today is not insignificant: for Mr. Merz, who has chaired the CDU since January 2022, it is a way of showing that the Merkel years are over. The ex-chancellor, whose policies he always criticized for being too centrist, has in fact never made Leitkultur his warhorse.
“Muslims who share our values belong to Germany”, we can also read in the new CDU program. Here too, the hardening is notable when we remember what the Christian Democrat Christian Wulff, then President of the Republic, declared in 2010: “Islam belongs to Germany. » This development has not escaped the representatives of the Muslim community. “The reference to “our values” is not clear “reacted the president of the Council of Islam in Germany, Burhan Kesici, for whom the new program of the CDU “contains language suggesting that Muslims reject German values”.
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