BERLIN, 23 July (DPA/EP) –
The leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, Friedrich Merz, has assured this Sunday that he does not have any veto that prevents him from collaborating with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, as other leaders of the German conservative formation have stated.
“Vetting parties has never solved a political problem,” Merz said in an interview with German public television ZDF, although he qualified that this collaboration would be limited to “legislative bodies” and “government formation,” for which reason he maintains his rejection of the formation of coalitions with the AfD.
Another CDU leader, Marko Wanderwitz, has recently stressed that his party would not agree to a coalition with the AfD despite its recent rise in the polls, which have raised the far-right party’s intention to vote to 22 percent.
However, Merz has stressed that Wanderwitz’s statements are “an individual opinion within the parliamentary group that we do not share.” In any case, Merz has stressed that the AfD deputies elected in two eastern German states of the country are the result of a democratic process: “we have to accept it.”
