BERLIN — With just two weeks until Germany heads to the polls, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and conservative frontrunner Friedrich Merz tore into each other over migration, the economy and how to handle U.S. President Donald Trump in a combative debate on national television Sunday night.
“How dumb can someone be?” Scholz asked at one point, attacking Merz for vowing to turn away asylum seekers at Germany’s border — a move, he argued, that would violate EU law and divide Europe at a time when Germany needs European solidarity to counter Trump’s tariff threats.
But when Scholz claimed his government had successfully cracked down on abuses of the asylum system, Merz shot back.
“You don’t live on this planet,” he retorted. “What you’re saying is a fairy tale.”
The clash came against the backdrop of a political firestorm over Merz’s decision to try to use votes from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to push tough immigration proposals through the Bundestag.
The move weakened Germany’s long-standing “firewall” against the far right, in place since World War II. Scholz seized on the controversy to warn that Merz was normalizing the far right. “I seriously fear you would consider a coalition with the AfD after the election,” he said.
Merz denied the charge that his conservatives have cooperated with the AfD, or would form a coalition with the party: “Let me say this once again, very clearly and explicitly, also to those who may wish otherwise: There will be no cooperation.”
Later in the debate, Merz faulted Scholz’s left-leaning government for enabling the AfD’s sharp rise in the polls, calling the party a “serious threat to our democracy,” and blaming the policies of Scholz, together with those of the Greens for allowing it to happen. “There has long been no majority for left-wing politics in this country,” he said.
With Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), polling in third place, far behind Merz’s leading conservatives, the debate represented one of Scholz’s last chances to fundamentally alter the outlines of the race. The two leaders clashed on economic and budget polices in particular, with Merz arguing for broad tax cuts and greater fiscal discipline, while Scholz depicted such policies as favoring the rich.
Merz, for his part, characterized Scholz’s management of the economy as catastrophic, blaming the current chancellor for the country’s deindustrialization. Scholz, meanwhile, blamed external shocks: “I’m not the one who invaded Ukraine, I’m not the one who stopped gas deliveries — that was [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”
Merz snapped back, criticising Scholz’s decision to close three nuclear plants: “Then why in God’s name did you end nuclear energy?” Scholz countered that restarting reactors — an option conservatives have said they will explore — would cost €40 billion.
But one of the biggest clashes of the night erupted over how to handle a possible trade war with the U.S., with Scholz arguing that Merz’s migration policies would undermine the solidarity Europe needed to stand up to Trump.
“Is Merz really proposing that the biggest country in Europe, right in the middle, should be the one breaking European law?” Scholz said, posing rhetorical questions. “Where we will soon have to rely on the whole of Europe if we get tariff policies from the American government, which would often be directed against Germany and which we can only reject together?”
“What Mr. Merz is proposing here is against German interests.”
Later in the debate, the two leaders were asked whether the EU should respond to Trump’s tariff threats with similar measures. Both suggested Europe is prepared to take countermeasures.
“Tariffs are certainly an instrument,” said Merz, and then referred to 2018, when then president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, reached an agreement with Trump in Washington to halt plans to introduce new tariffs against the bloc.
“Strong Europeans, strong response. Talk with the Americans on equal footing and tell them clearly what is possible and what is not,” Merz said, summarizing his approach to dealing with the new US administration.
Scholz suggested Europe already has a concrete plan for responding: “We are prepared for this,” he said. “So the answer is, with the greatest diplomatic caution, we can act as the European Union with an hour.”
When asked how to deal with Trump more broadly, both leaders often mostly vague answers.
“He is predictably unpredictable,” Merz said of Trump. “We need a common European strategy here, a common stance,” he added. “If I were elected, I would invest a lot of time and effort in creating this European unity.”
Scholz said his strategy for Trump would be the one the one he’s “already shown,” which he summarized as: “Clear words and friendly talks.”
This story was updated.
Merz and Scholz clash on migration, economy and Trump: ‘How dumb can somebody be?’
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