The word that broke the Brandmauer

Dear Reader,

In the end we will never know who told the truth about what happened on the morning of January 31st in a backroom of the Bundestag while the country waited for its lawmakers to vote on the CDU’s Influx Limitation Act.

What seems abundantly clear, though, is that the Brandmauer to the AfD fell on that day because the CDU and SPD disagreed over a single word in the text of the law. What’s more, we now know that that disagreement wasn’t based on an irreconcilable difference in opinion.

How do we know all this? Because the Sondierungspapier (exploratory document) the CDU and SPD have published on the state of their coalition negotiations shows that the parties have agreed to adopt all the changes to the law that were contained in the Influx Limitation Act (which narrowly failed to win a majority in January).

The Sondierungspapier lists the following points of agreement:

• We want to expressly include the goal of “limiting” migration - in addition to “controlling” it - in the Residence Act.

• We are temporarily suspending family reunification for those entitled to subsidiary protection.

• The Federal Police should be given the power to request temporary detention or custody pending deportation for foreign nationals who are obliged to leave the country.

Those are the three things that would have changed if the Influx Limitation Act had passed in January. The only difference is that the word “temporarily” has been introduced in reference to family reunions.

It is quite bizarre. Two months ago, the SPD refused to support the Influx Limitation Act and warned that “the gates of hell would open” if the CDU passed it by relying on votes from the AfD. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in opposition to it; national newspapers said it would “undermine our democracy”; the churches decried it as “defamatory to all migrants.”