Bundestag President Julia Klöckner supports the Chancellor in the urban landscape debate
Friedrich Merz (both CDU). “Proportionality is no longer true. If you accuse a Federal Chancellor of racism, you put everyone who is racist in perspective,” he said in his speech. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
“It was also malicious innuendo,” he added Klockner added. The discussions of the majority of people are different. “Assuming that Mr. Merz’s cityscape is about skin color – no normal person would do that,” he said. The majority understand what he means, “it’s not that difficult”. People will remember, for example, that “there was once a Christmas market that didn’t have safety posts and the park didn’t close after a certain time,” Klöckner said. These statements are neither right nor left. “That’s just a fact,” he said.
“Feelings of insecurity”
Referring to Merz’s reference to women’s sense of security in Germany, Klöckner said: “Something has changed. There is a feeling of insecurity, but the crime statistics also say the same thing.” Based on police crime statistics in 2024, the total number of crimes decreased by 1.7 percent compared to the previous year. However, crimes against personal freedom – such as threats, stalking or coercion – increased by 5.3 percent compared to 2023. Sexual violence increased by 9.3 percent – to more than 13,000 registered cases.
Merz said in mid-October that there were “problems in the urban landscape” in Germany that the government wanted to address through deportations. After receiving a lot of criticism, Merz then clarified his statement: It is not all migrants who cause problems, but those who do not have permanent resident status, do not work and do not obey the rules.
Critics saw Merz’s statement as discriminatory linking migration and crime as well as reproducing racist stereotypes.
