The Leipzig-based democracy researcher Oliver Decker suspects that the controversial statement by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) on the effects of migration on the cityscape was not a verbal slip, but a deliberate maneuver. "Mr. Merz is deliberately pushing a boundary line," Decker told the German Press Agency. The chancellor does not openly express certain resentments himself, "but he knows that the references will be understood and that he is simultaneously serving the resentments without offending the part of the CDU that does not share them".
The background to this is that the CDU is currently in a dilemma, Decker told dpa. "There are forces within it that are drawn to the AfD and those for whom the AfD program is not compatible with CDU values." Merz is trying to manoeuvre between these poles with his "murmured rather than expressed resentment".
