German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday accused election rival Friedrich Merz of having broken his word by accepting support from the far-right AfD to push an anti-immigration motion through parliament.
Advertisement
In their first and only one-on-one live TV debate ahead of the February 23 vote, centre-left Scholz – who is hoping for a late comeback amid poor poll ratings – went on the offensive against the conservative Merz.
He charged that Merz’s tactic of accepting votes from the Alternative for Germany late last month had meant “a breaking of his word and of a taboo”.
“And therefore one cannot be sure what the future will be like when things become difficult again,” he added.
Post-war Germany had done “very well in the past decades when the democratic parties agreed not to cooperate with the extreme right”, said Scholz.
Advertisement