Johannes Volkmann (CDU), the grandson of former Chancellor and ex-CDU chief Helmut Kohl, rejects the accusation by the SPD and the Greens that Friedrich Merz is destroying the European legacy of the Union.
“In Friedrich Merz’s European idea, we find ourselves in the tradition of great Christian Democrats of the Bonn Republic, such as Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl” writes the CDU’s federal board member in a guest article for the Handelsblatt (Monday edition). The opposite of what the SPD and the Greens are saying is the case. “Germany’s abstention in migration policy is splitting Europe. Merz stands for a return to the European policy principles of the former Bonn Republic.”
Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had repeatedly accused Merz of violating existing law. “Something like that would never have been done by a German federal chancellor” Scholz said in his government declaration last Wednesday. “This would have never been the case with the Christian Democrats Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel.”
For Volkmann, however, Merz’s proposal to use national rejections to ensure more order in migration is not an act of withdrawal from Europe, but a return to the political majorities of the Europeans and their governments. “This is not about giving up European responsibility in the sense of a national solo performance, but about creating a political foundation on which a sustainable European solution can first emerge” Volkmann writes. “European solutions” should no longer be a code for political inaction in the migration question.