Angela Merkel identified the climate and digitalization as the two great challenges facing Germany as she offered a spirited defense of her government record. The chancellor hit a number of familiar notes in her half-hour speech in the Bundestag, calling for more European Union engagement in foreign policy, a reinforcement of the social market economy, and more engagement against the rise of hate and intolerance in society.

Multilateralism remained her watch-word throughout, especially on how Europe should "leave a larger footprint" on world affairs. One of the pressing issues at the moment, she said, was rescuing the Iran nuclear deal, which the US has pulled out of. "That is a European task," she said.

Multilateralism, as well as the social market economy, were also her proposed solutions to the climate crisis, which she said the German government considered a "challenge for humanity."

"We must make this fundamental decision together," she told parliamentarians. "Whether we take responsibility or not. We also need to make the basic decision whether we want to take the risk and say it wasn't caused by humanity, and maybe it will all pass, or whether there is so much evidence that we have to take responsibility in view of future generations."

Digital catch-up

She also insisted that, despite consistent complaints about Germany's digital infrastructure, the government was moving forward rapidly. "We have to develop a strategy of how we provide blanket coverage, including for farmers and many others, to have access to broadband internet," she said. "We have to become better, faster, and keep up in the area of artificial intelligence. We have developed a strategy and invited internationally recognized professors to come to Germany to work."

The lower house of parliament was packed on Wednesday morning for one of the highlights of the parliamentary year: the general budget debate, when tradition demands that the chancellor defend the government from attacks on every point of policy from across the entire political spectrum.

But Merkel's government was under particular pressure at this year's debate, 10 days after regional elections in Saxony and Brandenburg showed a further erosion of support for the two centrist parties that make up her coalition: her own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

AfD attacks Merkel

Those results gave extra ammunition to the biggest opposition party, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose co-leader Alice Weidel opened proceedings with a comprehensive attack on the government's politics, accusing Merkel's administration of "deindustrializing" Germany in the name of a "green-leftist ideology" based on "climate madness."

Weidel's main target was the government's ongoing "energy transition," an attempt to shift to renewable energy sources away from both fossil fuels and nuclear power.

"Your alleged climate protection is nothing more than a monstrous deindustrialization program combined with veritable job destruction," Weidel said. "You waste billions to avert imaginary doomsdays in the distant future."

She reserved similar condemnation for plans to see the car industry move towards e-mobility, which she said showed the government was attempting a "planned economy."

AfD: 'State water-taxi service' for migrants

Weidel, whose party is primarily known for its anti-immigration stance, also condemned Merkel's plans to implement a new sea rescue mission in the Mediterranean. She accused Merkel of creating a "state water-taxi service" for migrants from Africa.

In response, Merkel called for more action against hate and intolerance while at the same time addressing increasing social and economic polarization.

"We know that in Germany people have concerns, that people feel left behind, that development between the town and the country are very different," Merkel added. "We need to find answers to that."

"Every day we witness attacks on Jews, attacks on foreigners, violence and hate speech," she said. "We have to fight against that. And we can distribute as much tax money to important projects as we want," she said.

"As long as it is not clear that in this country there is zero tolerance for racism, hatred and aversion to other people, a proper coexistence is not possible."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alexander Gauland Co-chairman Alexander Gauland said the German national soccer team's defender Jerome Boateng might be appreciated for his performance on the pitch - but people would not want "someone like Boateng as a neighbor." He also argued Germany should close its borders and said of an image showing a drowned refugee child: "We can't be blackmailed by children's eyes."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alice Weidel Alice Weidel generally plays the role of "voice of reason" for the far-right populists, but she, too, is hardly immune to verbal miscues. Welt newspaper, for instance, published a 2013 memo allegedly from Weidel in which she called German politicians "pigs" and "puppets of the victorious powers in World War II. Weidel initially claimed the mail was fake, but now admits its authenticity.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Frauke Petry German border police should shoot at refugees entering the country illegally, the former co-chair of the AfD told a regional newspaper in 2016. Officers must "use firearms if necessary" to "prevent illegal border crossings." Communist East German leader Erich Honecker was the last German politician who condoned shooting at the border.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Björn Höcke The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia made headlines for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. The comments came just as Germany enters an important election year - leading AfD members moved to expel Höcke for his remarks.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Beatrix von Storch Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts - but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Marcus Pretzell Pretzell, former chairman of the AfD in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and husband to Frauke Petry, wrote "These are Merkel's dead," shortly after news broke of the deadly attack on the Berlin Christmas market in December 2016.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Andre Wendt The member of parliament in Germany's eastern state of Saxony made waves in early 2016 with an inquiry into how far the state covers the cost of sterilizing unaccompanied refugee minors. Thousands of unaccompanied minors have sought asylum in Germany, according to the Federal Association for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees (BumF) — the vast majority of them young men.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Andre Poggenburg Poggenburg, head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alexander Gauland - again ... During a campaign speech in Eichsfeld in August 2017, AfD election co-candidate Alexander Gauland said that Social Democrat parliamentarian Aydan Özoguz should be "disposed of" back to Anatolia. The German term, "entsorgen," raised obvious parallels to the imprisonment and killings of Jews and prisoners of war under the Nazis.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks ... and again Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. Acknowledging Germany's responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era, he went on to say Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Andreas Kalbitz The Brandenburg state AfD chief admitted in 2019 to attending a 2007 rally in Greece by the ultranationalist Golden Dawn party at which a swastika flag was raised. "Der Spiegel" had published a leaked report by the German embassy in Athens naming him as one of "14 neo-Nazis" who arrived from Germany for the far-right rally. Kalbitz released a statement saying he took part out of "curiosity." Author: Dagmar Breitenbach



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