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BERLIN — A key ally of Friedrich Merz has ignited a major political debate by suggesting the chancellor’s centrist conservatives should break a taboo and cooperate with the country’s most popular party: the far-right Alternative for Germany.
Michael Kretschmer, premier of the eastern state of Saxony and a member of the chancellor’s center-right Christian Democratic Union, is challenging Merz’s insistence on keeping the country’s firewall against the surging AfD ahead of crucial elections in September that could put the far-right party in charge of a region for the first time.
“Anyone who still talks about firewalls hasn’t recognized the signs of the times,” Kretschmer, who leads a minority government in Saxony, told the Handelsblatt newspaper in an interview earlier this week. “We need to talk to anyone who wants to talk.”
With those comments, Kretschmer stirred up tensions that Merz has stubbornly sought to avoid.
