Friedrich Merz, the lead candidate for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to become Germany’s next chancellor, was believed to be at risk of violent attacks from the country’s far-left.
The concerns arose following a contentious January 31 vote on migration in the Bundestag, or German parliament.
Merz called on his CDU members to vote in favour of a non-binding resolution pushing for migrants to be rejected at Germany’s border alongside the Free Democratic Party and the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The move broke a long-standing cordon sanitaire against the Right in the country, provoking outrage on the Left.
According to German news outlet Bild on February 5, German security officials now believed that Merz could be physically attacked by those on the far-left, with authorities having ramped up the opposition leader’s security detail in recent days.
This reportedly included the implementation of members of Germany’s BKA central criminal investigation agency. Bild claimed the CDU leader was being guarded at the same level as the country’s sitting Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Merz has often arrived and left events accompanied by a convoy of cars, with it reportedly being kept secret which vehicle the senior politician was actually riding in.
Confidence in the security forces appeared to be mixed. Merz was said to have cancelled certain public appearances and curtailed others, with the politician’s exposure to the general public being reportedly kept to a minimum.
At events he has attended, guests have been subjected to intense security screening.
Delegates at a recent federal party conference for the CDU were said to have had numerous items confiscated from them, including food items such as homemade meals and sweets.
The efficacy of such methods has now been challenged. As the Bundestag migration vote was due to take place, Greenpeace activists were reportedly able to sneak into the conference hall to protest Merz’s actions regarding the ballot.
Despite the heightened security screenings, the protesters managed to bring in homemade signs to disrupt the process.
Bild claimed to have evidence that some of the Greenpeace activists used fake press passes to access the Berlin conference.
Merz’s decision to vote against mass migration has not only earned him the ire of the far-left, it also seemed to have caused him some difficulty in the polls ahead of the February 23 federal elections.
Data gathered by Forsa and YouGov have indicated that his decision to vote with the AfD has boosted left-wing parties, including Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Data published by INSA, though, appeared to show the CDU remained stable at 30 per cent support in the polls, with the Left having yet to make any sizeable gains as a result of the issue.
All pollsters appeared to agree that the AfD remained the second-strongest force in the country, with the party enjoying somewhere between 20 and 22 per cent public support across the country.
Richard Grenell, US President Donald Trump’s special missions envoy, has offered the German Conservative Christian Democratic Union some “free advice”. https://t.co/EYsfjB6oqu
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) February 3, 2025
