BERLIN (AP) – A top contender for the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right party is taking heat from his rivals for saying that the party accepted the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany “with a shrug of the shoulders”.
Friedrich Merz has emerged after a decade away from front-line politics to seek the leadership of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
He is competing with CDU General Secretary Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Health Minister Jens Spahn for the job, the new holder of which will be favourite to run for chancellor in Germany’s next election.
Kramp-Karrenbauer said Merz’s com-ments in a weekend radio interview were “a slap in the face for all those in the CDU” who have stood up against Alternative for Germany.
Spahn told yesterday’s edition of the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung daily that “many thousands of CDU election campaigners and members have stood against the rise” of the party – though he added that “of course we bear a share of the responsibility” for it.
Merkel announced last month that she would give up the CDU leadership, a job she has held since 2000, but remain Germany’s chancellor for the rest of this parliamentary term.
The five-year-old Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has capitalised on discontent with migration and wider anti-establishment sentiment since Merkel allowed a large influx of migrants to Germany in 2015 and 2016. It entered the national Parliament in last year’s election and now has seats in all the country’s 16 state legislatures.
