The German Bundestag turned into an arena of sharp political confrontation as lawmakers responded to Chancellor Friedrich Merz's government policy statement. The session saw AfD co-leader Alice Weidel deliver a sweeping indictment of the federal government, while Green Party parliamentary group leader Britta Haßelmann launched a pointed counter-offensive, both against Merz and against Weidel herself.
Weidel opened by declaring Merz's government policy statement "the swan song of a failure," accusing the chancellor and his government of pursuing a fundamentally misguided economic and migration policy. In social policy, she argued, the government was expressing outright "contempt for Germans."
She presented Merz with two options: either break the "left-wing coalition with the SPD" and seek new constructive majorities, or continue to wait and do nothing, "until citizens force new elections for an AfD reform government."
Weidel held the government responsible for deindustrialisation and what she called an "insolvency tsunami." High taxes, energy costs, bureaucracy and central planning were strangling the economy, she argued, while the state apparatus kept growing. The departure of industry abroad, in her words, bordered on a mass exodus.
On migration, she argued that large-scale immigration from the developing world into Germany's social systems was continuing unchecked. The government was compounding the problem, she said, by handing German citizenship to migrants and those living in Germany illegally.
On social policy, she argued that German taxpayers and contribution payers were being asked to pay higher pension contributions, work longer, absorb rising social insurance costs and accept benefit cuts, and to surrender their savings and homes if they needed long-term care. All this, she said, while funding what she called the lifelong full support of millions of people from the developing world.
Weidel also directed a personal attack at Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, tying the SPD's weak polling numbers to what she described as his background in left-wing activism. She accused him of never having worked, being unable to handle figures, and having spent his time with the Antifa movement.
Green Party parliamentary group leader Britta Haßelmann responded to Merz's address with a direct challenge: "Pull yourself together, deliver, treat people with respect." She acknowledged that the country needs sweeping reforms, but argued that people clearly sense something is wrong with what the government is proposing, because the burden of every so-called reform falls on the same people every time: contribution payers, those in need of care, and their relatives, above all women.
The chancellor, she said, had allowed the word "reform" to become synonymous with cuts.
Haßelmann warned that this public disillusionment was benefiting those "who want to destroy the country", a direct reference to the AfD. It was from this point that she turned her remarks squarely toward Weidel's speech.
What Weidel had delivered, Haßelmann said, was "nothing other than a propaganda show for her party and her interests." Behind it lay hatred, incitement, the humiliation of people and hostility toward human dignity, all used to elevate herself above others. "That is called racism," she said.
The AfD, she continued, has nothing to offer beyond destruction. The party has no connection to Europe, she argued, and instead aligns itself with Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump. "And that," she concluded, "is not the future of our country."
Today's debate illustrated in sharp relief the depth of division running through German politics at present. With the Merz-led coalition under pressure from within its own ranks and in the polls, and with the AfD continuing to position itself as the sole vehicle for systemic change, the exchanges in the Bundestag captured something larger than a single parliamentary session. They reflected a fundamental contest over the direction, values, and future of the Federal Republic itself.
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