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🇩🇪 Germany /Elections & Politics

Söder Opposes AfD Ban but Calls for a Tougher Approach

From Die Zeit · () German

Translated from German and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Newswire From a news agency Context piece
  • CSU leader Markus Söder rejected a ban on the AfD while urging other parties to confront it more directly and clearly.
  • He said the “firewall” strategy had failed after the AfD’s strong election result in Saxony-Anhalt and predicted an extremely high chance that AfD winner Ulrich Siegmund would become state premier with BSW support.
  • Söder also opposed cutting Saxony-Anhalt’s fiscal-equalization funds as punishment and called for a fairness review of planned pension and tax reforms.

Markus Söder wants a tougher fight against the AfD, but not a ban. The CSU chairman said the party should be challenged on its policies rather than met with repeated calls for prohibition.

a little more forceful, more concise and clearer

· Markus SöderSöder said political opponents should confront the AfD more directly instead of repeatedly calling for a ban.

Speaking on the ARD program “Maischberger,” Söder said the AfD had “many weaknesses in terms of its policies.” Political opponents, he argued, needed to become “a little more forceful, more concise and clearer” instead of looking anxiously toward a ban each time. He said the AfD was not a normal party because parts of its ideology were contemptuous of humanity, but added that its election by voters had to be respected.

Söder described the firewall strategy as having failed after the AfD’s strong result in Saxony-Anhalt. “In football, you would say: Then you simply have to get into more challenges,” he said. The AfD criticized everything, Söder added, and should now be pressed to show whether it could do better itself. He put the likelihood of AfD election winner Ulrich Siegmund becoming Saxony-Anhalt’s minister-president at “extremely high” and assumed the BSW would help him take office.

In football, you would say: Then you simply have to get into more challenges.

· Markus SöderHe used the football comparison to argue that the firewall strategy against the AfD had failed.

He called proposals to cut Saxony-Anhalt’s payments from the Länderfinanzausgleich, the federal-state fiscal equalization system, “absurd.” The system should be changed generally, he said, but not used to punish a state. Söder was more open to reconsidering Saxony-Anhalt’s planned autumn chairmanship of the Conference of Minister-Presidents if the state had no new government by then. He said the conference was not a constitutional body and that its chairmanship was based on rules agreed by the state premiers.

extremely high

· Markus SöderHe assessed the likelihood that AfD election winner Ulrich Siegmund would become Saxony-Anhalt’s minister-president.

Söder also called for a “major fairness check” in the planned pension reform, including exemptions and transition periods linked to the controversial abolition of the pension at 63. He urged savings in basic income support and migration costs to fund measures such as lower energy taxes, and said the planned tax reform also needed improvements.

major fairness check

· Markus SöderHe called for a broad review of fairness in the planned pension reform.
About this summary

Originally published by Die Zeit in German. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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