German opposition's migration bill narrowly defeated amid controversy over far-right support

BERLIN — The German parliament narrowly rejected on Friday an opposition-sponsored bill calling for tougher rules on migration that risked becoming the first draft legislation to pass thanks to a far-right party. It became a focus of a controversy about the attitude toward the far right of the front-runner in Germany's upcoming election.

Opposition leader and front-runner Friedrich Merz has put demands for a more restrictive approach to migration at the center of his campaign for the Feb. 23 election since a deadly knife attack last week by a rejected asylum-seeker.

The way he has done so prompted opponents to accuse him of breaking a taboo and endangering mainstream parties' ''firewall'' against the far-right Alternative for Germany. He insists his position is unchanged and that he didn't and won't work with the party.

On Wednesday, Merz put a nonbinding motion to parliament calling for Germany to turn back many more migrants at its borders, insisting decisions are needed now regardless of who supports them. The measure squeaked through thanks to support from the far-right party, a first that draw a rare public rebuke from ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, a former leader of Merz's party.

On Friday, months-old legislation proposed by Merz's center-right Union bloc that called for an end to family reunions for migrants with a protection status that falls short of full asylum went to a vote. It also would have given federal police increased powers to carry out deportations. The center-left governing parties said they would reject the so-called ''influx limitation bill,'' while a combination of opposition parties including Alternative for Germany, or AfD, said they would back it.

After an unusually heated debate delayed by long and unsuccessful negotiations on a compromise between mainstream parties, it was rejected by 350 votes to 338, with five abstentions. Some lawmakers cheered and clapped as the result was announced. Merz, who said 12 lawmakers from his own bloc didn't back the plan, asserted that the ''asylum turnaround'' he sought failed because of the governing parties.

This week's maneuvering has amplified a divide between Merz's bloc, Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left Social Democrats and their remaining coalition partners, the environmentalist Greens — parties he may need to form a governing coalition after the election.

An emotional debate on migration and the far right

Polls show the Union leading with around 30% support, while AfD is second with about 20%, and the Social Democrats and Greens are further back.

Merz appears to hope that he will gain support by making the Union look decisive in forcing a tougher approach to migration, while blunting the appeal of the anti-immigration AfD and making the governing parties — which say they already have done much to tackle the issue — look out of touch with Germans' concerns. It's uncertain whether that will succeed.

''You don't have to tear down a firewall with a wrecking ball to set your own house on fire. It's enough to keep drilling holes,'' Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a Green, said in Friday's debate. ''First a motion on Wednesday, then a bill today — what's coming next?''

Merz said: ''You can't seriously believe that we are reaching out our hand to a party that wants to destroy us?'' He said he will ''do everything in the coming weeks, months and if necessary years so that this party doesn't continue to grow and becomes a peripheral phenomenon again as soon as possible.''

''People out there ... don't want us to argue with each other about AfD,'' he said. ''They want us to reach solutions to the questions with which people concern themselves in their everyday lives, and above all we want to reach solutions so that people in our country can feel safe again.''

An approach that drew protests

The 12-year-old AfD first entered the national parliament in 2017, benefiting from Merkel's decision two years earlier to allow large numbers of migrants into the country. Scholz has suggested that Merz can no longer be trusted not to form a government with AfD, an accusation that Merz has angrily rejected.

Merz insisted that he has sought majorities in the political center. The center-left parties pointed the finger back at him, noting that he said there could be no compromises on his proposals.

AfD chief whip Bernd Baumann taunted Merz's party, saying that ''once again these are our demands; the Union only copied them and so we are voting for them again.'' He said the conservatives are ''thoroughly untrustworthy'' and won't implement their promises.

Thousands of protesters gathered on Thursday outside the headquarters in Berlin of Merz's Christian Democratic Union. Other demonstrations were held elsewhere in Germany.

The election is being held earlier than originally scheduled after Scholz's three-party governing coalition collapsed in November in a dispute over how to revitalize the German economy. That left Scholz running a government that lacks a parliamentary majority.