Four weeks before Germany’s snap election, the political temperature is rising as the campaign shifts onto the contentious terrain of migration and Elon Musk steps up his support for the far-right AfD party.

Tens of thousands marched in Berlin, Cologne and other cities over the weekend to protest against the AfD, and to oppose plans to clamp down on migration floated by Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic front-runner in the race to become chancellor. Merz’s proposals are due to go to parliament this week.

Merz, whose CDU-led bloc is ahead in all polls for the Feb. 23 election, has caused a public uproar by proposing a radical overhaul of Germany’s migration policy that contains many ideas in common with the AfD, including permanent border checks and expedited deportation of migrants who entered the country illegally or whose asylum request has been turned down.

The AfD has said it will support the bill, yet Merz’s chances of mustering the votes to pass the legislation look slim. More significant is that he appears to be questioning a central political taboo in Germany, namely the existence of a so-called firewall between the mainstream establishment and the AfD, which means that no party will cooperate with the far-right force.

That strategy hasn’t blunted support for the AfD, which is polling in second place with a platform that includes pulling Germany out of the European Union.

“The firewall to the AfD must not crumble,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose Social Democrats are trailing in third place, warned in the Stuttgarter Zeitung. “Until now, I had the impression that we could rely on the opposition leader’s statement that he would not work with the AfD even after the election,” said Scholz. “Now I’m really worried that the CDU wants to push through its motions in the Bundestag with votes from the AfD.”

Scholz says that Merz’s proposals amount to a blanket rejection of asylum seekers at German borders, and would be unconstitutional. At an election campaign event in Saarbrücken in western Germany Saturday, Scholz said the right to asylum enshrined in German and European law should not be called into question, and that with his proposal Merz has shown that he is not fit to govern.

The sense of central political tenets of the postwar period being ripped up in Germany was compounded by Elon Musk’s reappearance on the campaign trail in support of the AfD. Musk, the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump who has previously endorsed the AfD and its lead election candidate, Alice Weidel, made a surprise virtual appearance in the eastern city of Halle on Saturday.

Beamed in on a huge screen, Musk told a crowd of about 4,000 that “it’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.” There is, he added in apparent reference to Germany’s wartime atrocities under the Nazis, “too much focus on past guilt” and “children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great-grandparents.”

If hardly new for a party that has many instances of members relativizing the Nazi dictatorship, Musk’s comments touched a raw nerve in the week when world leaders are preparing to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who will host Scholz and others for a commemorative event on Monday, said in a Sunday post on X — the network that Musk owns — that the message heard at the AfD rally “sounded all too familiar and ominous.” He didn’t mention Musk by name, referring only to “the main actors” at the rally.

Musk’s 12-minute speech received cheers and standing ovations from the German-flag waving crowd in Halle irrespective, despite appearing to lose the audience at times, like when he digressed into Germany’s ancient history and its connections to the Roman empire. That included at one point calling on AfD supporters to read Julius Caesar’s account of his first encounter with the “German tribes” involved in the Gaul campaign, and how Caesar was impressed by the “tough warriors.”

The outcome of the German vote will be decisive for Europe, “and maybe for the whole world,” he concluded. “The future of civilization could hang on this election.” Weidel thanked Musk for his support and said she would “make Germany great again.”

Musk is supposed to deliver another video statement to Germany this week, at an event hosted by the newspaper Die Welt on Tuesday. Both Merz and Weidel are due to attend.

Merz’s CDU/CSU gained one percentage point to 30% in the latest poll by research institute INSA published by Bild am Sonntag newspaper, followed by the AfD at 21% and Scholz’s Social Democrats with 16%. The Greens lost one point to 12%.

A separate INSA poll for Bild found 66% of participants supported Merz’s plan for tougher immigration rules, with about 19% opposed.

Fatal stabbing

Merz first presented the ideas last week in response to the fatal stabbing of an adult and a child by a suspected 28-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan. He initially made clear that he wouldn’t mind the AfD’s support. “Anyone who wants to vote in favor of these motions should do so,” he said then. “I don’t look to the right or the left; I only look straight ahead on these issues.”

Around 100,000 people gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in central Berlin on Saturday to protest against what they termed a “shift to the right” in Germany, according to the organizers. For all the campaign focus, the number of asylum seekers to Germany dropped by 29% in the last year.

While Merz has said he doesn’t mind AfD support, he’s since tried to make the legislation unpalatable for them, minimizing the risk of a Bundestag vote that could be seen as cooperation with the pro-Russia, anti-EU party. The draft legislation, seen by Bloomberg, contains a passage denouncing the AfD that will make it almost impossible for the party to support.

“The AfD uses the problems, worries and fears that have arisen as a result of mass illegal migration to stir up xenophobia and spread conspiracy theories,” the text reads. Its policy goals “endanger Germany’s stability, security and prosperity,” and this is why it “is not a partner, but our political opponent.”

Merz’s parliamentary group has sent the proposed legislation to the SPD, the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats, but not to the AfD.

_____

(With assistance from Michael Nienaber, Verena Sepp and Christoph Rauwald.)

_____

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.