Until three weeks ago, the matter seemed settled: immigration would not be the central theme of the German legislative elections on February 23, none of the government parties having any interest in competing with the far right on the subject. But the car attack perpetrated on the Christmas market in Magdeburg (Saxony-Anhalt), on December 20, 2024, by a doctor of Saudi origin who arrived in 2006 with refugee status, which left six dead and nearly of 300 injured, came to impact a campaign which promised to be dominated by the economic crisis.
Occurring four months after the knife massacre in Solingen (three dead and eight injured) and seven months after that in Mannheim (one dead and five injured), both committed by refugees, the Magdeburg attack left the country in mourning for a few days before Christmas, pushing the candidates in the campaign to toughen up their proposals on migration, even though the motivations of its author, radically hostile to Islam, remain unclear.
In an interview with the Sunday edition of the daily The worldthe leader of the conservatives (the Christian Democratic Union, CDU/Christian Social Union in Bavaria, CSU), Friedrich Merz, favorite for the chancellorship, thus pleaded, Sunday January 5, in favor of forfeiture of nationality offenders with two passports. “To avoid attacks or other crimes, foreign offenders must be deported after the second offense at the latest”he says, offering their “withdraw German nationality” so that dual nationality “become the exception” and not “the rule”.
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