The man who is favored to be Germany’s next chancellor has opened the door to working with the Alternative for Germany to pass tough new immigration restrictions, potentially breaking a longstanding effort to shun a party whose flirtation with Nazi language has made it anathema to the political mainstream.
The opening by Friedrich Merz, the leader of the center-right Christian Democrats, who leads in the polls for the chancellor election next month, came after a knife attack last week in Bavaria by a mentally ill Afghan immigrant that killed two people, including a toddler.
The attack, the latest in a string of high-profile killings carried out by immigrants, has since upended Germany’s presidential election, set for Feb. 23, refocusing what had been an economy-themed campaign toward the contentious issue of migration.
Mr. Merz is trying to show voters that he and his party are serious about tightening Germany’s borders and following through on deportations of migrants whom authorities have determined should leave the country.
But until now, all parties at the national level had built what is colloquially known as a “firewall” around the AfD, hoping to blunt the party’s move into the mainstream.
The AfD is currently running second in polls before the election, sitting comfortably ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, though well behind Mr. Merz’s Christian Democrats.
Migration concerns have risen in Germany, where millions of refugees and other migrants have arrived in the last decade, largely from Syria and Ukraine. The AfD has made promises of border crackdowns and deportations of some migrants a centerpiece of its pitch to voters.
Other parties, including the CDU and Social Democrats, have promised new migration restrictions, particularly after a Syrian immigrant killed three people last summer in a stabbing attack in the city of Solingen.
But until last week, those mainstream parties had campaigned more heavily on promised fixes to Germany’s stagnating economy than on migration policy. The Bavarian attacks changed that script.
Mr. Merz has pushed in recent days to force a vote in Parliament over migration legislation. The plan would bring permanent border patrols, would stop anyone from entering the country without legal papers and place in custody all migrants who have been ordered to leave the country.
The legislation could pass on the strength of votes from the AfD, forming a partnership that mainstream German political parties have long treated as taboo, and drawing fierce criticism from other mainstream political leaders.
“Friedrich Merz is willing to make common cause with the AfD,” Lars Klingbeil, the co-leader of Mr. Scholz’ Social Democratic party, told the Rheinische Post, a regional daily newspaper. “In doing so, he is abandoning the CDU’s previous principles in its dealings with the AfD, splitting the democratic center of our country and alienating our European partners,” he added.
Mr. Merz defended his plan to support the restrictions.
“What is right in principle is not made wrong by the fact that the wrong people vote for it,” he said Monday.
The 28-year-old Afghan immigrant, whom German media outlets have identified as Enamullah O., attacked and killed a two-year-old Moroccan boy with a large kitchen knife. The boy and his friends, as well as their minders, were on a preschool outing in the park in Aschaffenburg, a quaint town in the state of Bavaria, close to Frankfurt. A bystander who attempted to stop the attacker was also killed. One of the teachers and a 61-year-old man were hurt.
The man suspected in the attack, who lived in asylum housing nearby, has been remanded to a closed psychiatric ward, authorities have said.
The seemingly random killings galvanized the country in ways similar to other attacks last year. Last May, a refugee from Afghanistan attacked a far-right demonstration, injuring five and killing a police officer. In December, a man who had immigrated from Saudi Arabia decades earlier drove into a Christmas market, killing 5 and injuring hundreds.
Some officials urged caution in response. Jürgen Herzing, the mayor of Aschaffenburg, a town of nearly 80,000 inhabitants, warned that despite “parallels” with other recent attacks, people should refrain from acts of revenge.
“We cannot and must not blame an entire population group for the actions of an individual,” Mr. Herzing said.
But political leaders were swift to call for action, most notably those with the AfD.
“The Aschaffenburg knife murders must lead to a change in asylum policy: dangerous asylum seekers are to be deported,” Tino Chrupalla, one of the two party leaders of the AfD, wrote in a post on social media just hours after the news broke.
Mr. Scholz issued a statement calling the killing an “unfathomable act of terror.” But he stopped short of visiting the site of the crime, as he did after other similar attacks.
A version of the bill that Mr. Merz is expected to bring to Parliament contains a paragraph criticizing the AfD for seizing on problems associated with “massive illegal migration” to promote xenophobia.
But despite earlier assurances that under his watch his Christian Democratic Party would never rely on the AfD for votes, Mr. Merz did not rule out doing so in this case.
“I don’t look to the right or the left. I just look straight ahead on these issues,” he said last week.
The AfD celebrated Mr. Merz’s announcement, implying that the legislation is little more than a copy of what the AfD has demanded.
“The firewall has fallen! The CDU and CSU have accepted my offer to vote together with the AfD in the Bundestag on the crucial issue of migration,” Ms. Weidel wrote in a post on X.
“This is good news for our country!” she added.
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