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Scholz blasts Merz, elevating doubts over post-election German coalition



BERLIN — With Germany’s election lower than a month away, center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz has thrown chilly water on the prospect of reviving the nation’s conventional grand coalition — bluntly declaring that he “can’t belief” conservative chief Friedrich Merz anymore.

His remarks come after the Bundestag narrowly accepted a nonbinding movement introduced by the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU/CSU) to permit asylum-seekers to be turned again on the border.

The measure handed 348 to 344, with the conservatives garnering help from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the fiscally conservative Free Democrats (FDP) — an unprecedented alignment that Scholz labeled a “historic breach of taboo.”

“The consensus that democratic events don’t cooperate with the acute proper was damaged immediately,” Scholz mentioned late Wednesday evening in an interview with German public broadcaster ARD. “Merz had repeatedly assured that this wouldn’t occur. That’s why I can’t belief him anymore, though I did every week in the past.”

The vote marked the primary time ever the CDU actively pushed by means of laws with AfD backing, regardless of Merz’s repeated pledges to maintain the far-right party at arm’s size. Scholz accused the CDU of “intentionally accepting” AfD help to get its coverage by means of parliament.

For years, Germany’s mainstream events have upheld a strict firewall towards the far proper, refusing coalitions or cooperation at any degree to stop its normalization. But because the AfD surges in polls and wins native elections, cracks are rising.

Merz’s conservative CDU is main within the nationwide polls, making him the front-runner to type a authorities after the Feb. 23 vote. But with no party anticipated to safe an outright majority, a CDU-SPD grand coalition — final seen beneath Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2013 to 2021 — has been floated as a stabilizing choice.

Scholz’s sharp rhetoric, nevertheless, alerts fractures that would make such an alliance unworkable.

“My aim now’s to stop a majority of CDU and AfD in any respect prices,” he mentioned, hinting at a protracted energy battle forward. If the chancellor holds to that stance, Germany may face weeks — if not months — of political gridlock.

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Written by EGN NEWS DESK

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