German chancellor Friedrich Merz has denied he is embracing dog-whistle politics to win back voters concerned by mass immigration and its consequences.
Last week the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader polarised public opinion with a remark that the last decade of mass immigration had created “problems in the cityscape” across Germany.
The remark – in particular its ambiguity – triggered huge protest, including outside the CDU party headquarters in Berlin.
On Monday, journalists who asked what he meant exactly were told to “check with your daughters”.
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“You’ll get a pretty loud and clear answer, I have nothing to take back,” said Merz. “On the contrary, I would stress that we have to change something.”
Merz allies and conservative media outlets have applauded him for shattering a taboo over public security concerns, in particular people loitering in public spaces.
Germany’s federal interior minister Alexander Dobrindt said it was “a fact that illegal immigration has changed the appearance of our cities and people’s perceptions”.
“When politics is no longer able to express what many people feel,” he added, “that only strengthens more radical forces.”
The CDU is bracing itself for four state elections next year, including two where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is up to 14 points ahead of the Merz party in opinion polls.
At federal level, polls place the AfD and CDU neck and neck.
AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla accused Merz, with his “cityscape” remark, of “a particular kind of hypocrisy for criticising a situation his party helped create” during Angela Merkel’s time as chancellor.
While Merz and his closest allies push a migration line in a bid to outflank the far right, not everyone in the Berlin coalition believes this strategy will work.
Berlin’s centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), Merz’s junior federal partner, has warned that the remarks are more divisive than constructive.
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil, after days of holding his tongue, lost patience on Wednesday. Without once mentioning the chancellor, Klingbeil said he wanted “to live in a country where politics builds bridges and brings society together, instead of using language to divide”.
The next day a more contrite Merz said he was referring to groups of immigrants without residency or work permits who failed to respect rules in Germany and, as a result, “shape the public face of our cities”.
“That’s why so many people in Germany and other European Union countries ... are simply afraid to move around in public spaces,” he said.
Opinion polls paint a mixed picture on the issue. A public television poll on Friday found almost two thirds (63 per cent) of Germans agree with the Merz remarks, in particular older voters, yet the percentage of those in the same poll who feel unsafe in public places dropped to one third.
An earlier Bild tabloid poll suggested 43 per cent of Germans perceived a deterioration in public order in the last decade. One in two people said they no longer felt safe in train stations.
But as the row dragged on, even Bild agreed that Merz had overshot his target and was acting more like an opposition politician than a leader with a mandate for change: “We need more plain speaking but the time for bla-bla is over.”
Official figures show that an estimated 225,000 people are living in Germany without legal status, of which nearly 60 per cent have a failed asylum application.
Five months after taking office, Germany has stepped up border controls and deportations, including new agreements with the previously-shunned Taliban regime in Kabul.
