The CDU federal chairman has received harsh criticism for statements about migrant children.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin CDU leader Friedrich Merz drew sharp criticism with a statement about migrant children in the ZDF program “Markus Lanz”. The economist Marcel Fratzscher, who had also been on the show, accused Merz of making anti-business statements via Twitter.
In the context of the riots on New Year’s Eve, Merz said about dealing with teachers: “And then they want to call these children to order, and the result is that the fathers appear in the schools and refuse to do that. Especially when it comes to teachers, that they correct their sons, the little pashas, from time to time.”
The term “Pascha” is colloquially used to describe men in particular who are naturally served by a woman.
Fratzscher spoke of “blatant populism” because Merz generalized from a small minority to all people with Arab roots. He also harms the German economy.
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“Apart from the fact that these statements are factually incorrect in their generalization alone, they make Germany unattractive as an immigration country,” wrote the President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) on Twitter.
“In this way, we are blocking the opportunity to attract specialists and workers from abroad, which we urgently need.” The current shortage of workers is already causing existential damage to companies. “We shouldn’t exacerbate this crisis with thoughtless statements,” warned Fratzscher.
The federal government’s integration commissioner, Reem Alabali-Radovan, classified the Merz statement as racist, which could also lead to the “stigmatization of entire groups”. The federal manager of the Greens, Emily Büning, accused the CDU politician of having “not updated his image of society since 1990”. Merz does not understand “that we have long been a diverse society,” she said “Zeit online”.
Support for Merz from the teachers’ association and the AfD
The criticism is not shared in the CDU. The party chairman argued in a differentiated manner and did not generalize, it said. There is also enormous approval from the population for his statements. The CDU has long seen Germany as a country of immigration and also advocates regulated migration, especially into the labor market.
Merz also received a lot of encouragement on Twitter. The CDU also pointed out that the teachers’ association also shared Merz’s view. Heinz-Peter Meidinger, President of the Teachers’ Association, agreed with the CDU leader, because there was a fundamental problem that female teachers in particular were not taken seriously and their authority was not recognised.
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Nevertheless, one must of course restrict, emphasized Meidinger, “that this cannot be a general suspicion or blanket accusation against all families with a corresponding migration background,” said Meidinger.
Merz also received support from the deputy chairman of the AfD parliamentary group, Leif-Erik Holm. “Merz only said what every normal person in Germany thinks,” said Holm.
This Friday, the CDU national board meets to talk about the new year. There the party will also adopt an eight-page paper with which it wants to present its idea of economic, energy and climate policy in a holistic manner. In the 2021 federal election in particular, the competence values of the CDU collapsed in economic policy.
As it was said, after the first year as federal chairman, Merz now wants to deal more intensively with the party and the substantive work. In the first year it was important to reorganize the parliamentary group for opposition work. In 2023, the new basic program should be largely completed under the leadership of Deputy Party Chairman Carsten Linnemann.
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