BERLIN (Reuters) – The leader of Germany’s centre-right Christian Democrats, Friedrich Merz, said he was open to working with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at the local level, though not in state or national government.
Founded a decade ago, the nationalist, anti-immigrant AfD recently reached a new high in an opinion poll, gaining two percentage points from the previous week to hit 22%.
That still places the AfD behind Merz’s CDU, which dropped one point to 26%, but ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats as well as the two junior partners in his coalition.
An AfD candidate last month won a vote to become a district leader in Europe’s biggest economy for the first time, a breakthrough for the party that taps into voter fears about recession, migration and the green transition, say analysts.
“We are, of course, obliged to accept democratic elections,” Merz said in an interview with broadcaster ZDF on Sunday. “And if a district administrator, a mayor is elected there who belongs to the AfD, it’s natural to look for ways to then continue to work in that city.”
The CDU would not participate with the AfD in legislative bodies from the European Parliament to the state parliaments, he added.
(Reporting by Reinhard Becker; Writing by Miranda Murray; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
