The CDU’s Shameful Pandering to the Far Right in Germany

Just as in the US right now, the German government is attempting to implement austerity measures punishing the poor that are short-sighted, profoundly discriminatory, and ineffective

Germany appears to be in a tailspin right now. The economy is floundering. The far right is ascendent. Things are not working, thanks to decades of political mismanagement and miscalculations. Naturally, it is all the fault of people at the bottom rather than a political and economic elite that is still drawn overwhelmingly from the country’s 1%.

This is certainly the rallying cry of the new government led by the CDU under Friedrich Merz, a former stooge for Blackrock. Unsurprisingly, under the increasingly hard-right leadership of Friedrich Merz and his loyal enforcer Jens Spahn, the CDU seems to have found a convenient scapegoat for the country’s deep economic troubles: the people least responsible for causing them. Instead of tackling the stagnation that has dragged Europe’s biggest economy down for more than a decade, Merz and Spahn are ramping up attacks on the welfare state and immigrants — all to win back voters drifting to the far-right AfD.

Bottom line, however, the CDU’s proposals to streamline the welfare state aren’t just cruel — many are clearly unconstitutional.

Job Centers: Bureaucracy, Racism and Wasted Billions

At the heart of this debate right now are Germany’s Job Centers. On paper, they’re supposed to help the unemployed find work. In practice, they’ve become bloated bureaucracies that devour billions while humiliating the very people they’re meant to help.

A Monitor (ARD) investigation revealed that 85% of Job Center budgets are eaten up by administration — not actual job programs. Source: Monitor/ARD, “Jobcenter: Mehr Bürokratie als Hilfe,” 2024.

Meanwhile, websites like gegen-hartz.de chronicle how people must constantly sue Job Centers just to get what the law says they deserve. Over 40% of welfare or Bürgergeld sanctions are overturned every year. Source: Gegen-Hartz.de, “Sozialgericht urteilt gegen Jobcenter,” 2023.

And if you’re an immigrant, it’s worse. Reports by Mediendienst Integration confirm widespread discrimination in Job Centers, where racial and other discriminatory profiling is routine. Source: Mediendienst Integration, “Diskriminierung in Jobcentern,” 2023.

Germany’s Real Economic Malaise

Instead of addressing the real roots of Germany’s stagnation — underinvestment, a broken energy transition, a digital infrastructure stuck in the 2000s — Merz and Spahn reach for the oldest distraction in the book: scapegoat the poor and immigrants.

The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) bluntly calls this a “dangerous stagnation.” Source: DIW Berlin, “Deutsche Wirtschaft: Stagnation droht,” 2024. The Bundesbank keeps revising growth forecasts downward while real wages stall and rents skyrocket.

Fixing this requires real investment, not copycat far-right cruelty.

Spahn: Merz’s Enforcer — With an Old Grudge

If Merz is the architect of this brutal strategy, Jens Spahn has become his attack dog. And it’s no accident — Spahn has positioned himself as Merz’s loyal lieutenant in the CDU’s hard-right turn.

In recent months, Spahn has loudly backed Merz’s aggressive rhetoric against Bürgergeld recipients, promising tougher sanctions, faster cuts and “more discipline” for families on the breadline. He has repeatedly appeared alongside Merz at party events and in press interviews, echoing Merz’s calls for cutting welfare down to what they claim is “just enough” — or, shockingly, sometimes none at all for so-called “repeat offenders.” Source: Bild, “Spahn fordert härtere Sanktionen bei Bürgergeld,” 2024. Ignoring of course that as of now, Bürgergeld is widely seen as too low to guarantee a decent standard of living — according to the German Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband, it should be at least €725 a month for a single adult, meaning it falls short by several hundred euros. Paritätischer Gesamtverband, “Hartz IV reicht nicht zum Leben: Regelsätze müssen steigen,” 2023

This rhetoric is, of course, unabashed foreigner and poor bashing. The reality is that the majority of Bürgergeld recipients are German citizens — about 63% — while around 37% are foreign nationals, including recognized refugees; additionally, roughly one-third of all recipients have a registered disability or chronic illness that limits their ability to work according to the government’s own statistics. Bundesagentur für Arbeit, “Bürgergeld-Statistik: Empfänger nach Staatsangehörigkeit und gesundheitlicher Lage,” 2024

Yet Spahn’s backing has helped Merz steady his shaky leadership and reassure the CDU’s hard-right base that the party is ready to talk and act like the AfD — without ever admitting that these proposals are legally if not economically dubious and socially destructive.

Not His First Attack on Immigrants

This isn’t Spahn’s first attempt to curry favor with the nationalist right. Back in the last government, as Health Minister, Spahn made headlines for complaining about “too much English” being spoken in Berlin’s coffee shops — a populist jab at young immigrants and expats. It did nothing to fix Germany’s labor gaps but gave right-wing culture warriors a convenient target. Tagesspiegel, “Spahn beschwert sich über Englisch in Berlin,” 2019.

At the same time, Spahn somehow skated by without consequence for a shady real estate deal involving a luxury villa in Berlin — purchased under questionable circumstances from Markus Richter, now the man responsible for fixing Germany’s failing digitalization. Handelsblatt, “Spahns Immobilienaffäre: Hauskauf von Richter,” 2022. And before that, Richter was unbelievably, in charge not only of the government agency for immigrants and refugees, but involved with their IT management.

The reality is that when Spahn tells poor families they need to “tighten their belts,” the hypocrisy is breathtaking.

The Threat to Strip Welfare Entirely

Among the worst ideas floating around the Merz-Spahn CDU is to cut Bürgergeld to zero for people who supposedly don’t cooperate enough with Job Centers. This idea has been explicitly ruled unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court in its landmark 2019 ruling on Hartz IV sanctions, which upheld the right to a minimum level of subsistence as a cornerstone of Germany’s Basic Law. Bundesverfassungsgericht, “Hartz IV Urteil 2019”.

Experts and newspapers alike have blasted these proposals as a clear violation of fundamental rights — and a threat to families, single parents, and people with disabilities who would be hit hardest. Frankfurter Rundschau, “Merz’ Pläne verletzen Grundrechte,” 2024.

Evicting Families in the Worst Housing Crisis Since WWII

If cutting families off welfare wasn’t enough, the CDU has also floated the idea that people whose rent is deemed too high should be forced to move — even though there’s nowhere cheaper to go. According to the Deutscher Mieterbund, Germany’s shortfall of affordable homes is the worst since 1945, with more than 700,000 units missing. Source: Deutscher Mieterbund, “Wohnungsnot verschärft sich dramatisch,” 2024.

This is policy as punishment, not policy as solution.

Feeding the AfD

Here’s the final insult: the harder Merz and Spahn pander to far-right tropes, the stronger the AfD gets. The recycled cheap scapegoating does nothing to fix the country’s real crises — stagnant wages, sky-high rents, a broken digital transition (ironic, given Spahn’s real estate buddy runs it) — remain unsolved.

A Better Way Forward

Germany doesn’t need cheap attacks on the poor or immigrants. It needs real solutions: investment in affordable housing, schools, digital infrastructure, and green jobs. Imagine billions spent on training, apprenticeships, childcare and family support instead of bureaucratic bloat and court battles with Job Centers.

That was the promise of the soziale Marktwirtschaft — the social market economy that made Germany the envy of Europe. That promise is worth defending.

Conclusion: Stop the Cruelty, Fix the Crisis

Spahn’s cheerleading for Merz’s unconstitutional cruelty shows how far the CDU has drifted to the right. But scapegoating the vulnerable and parroting the AfD won’t fix Germany’s economic malaise — it will make it worse.

If Germany wants to keep its democracy strong, it must fight these bad ideas at every level — and remember that tearing down the welfare state won’t rebuild what’s really broken.

Sources:

• Monitor/ARD: Jobcenter: Mehr Bürokratie als Hilfe

• Gegen-Hartz.de: Sozialgericht urteilt gegen Jobcenter

• Mediendienst Integration: Diskriminierung in Jobcentern

• DIW Berlin: Deutsche Wirtschaft: Stagnation droht

• Deutscher Mieterbund: Wohnungsnot auf Rekordniveau

• Bundesverfassungsgericht: Hartz IV Urteil 2019

• Bild: Spahn fordert härtere Sanktionen bei Bürgergeld

• Tagesspiegel: Spahn beschwert sich über Englisch in Berlin

• Handelsblatt: Spahns Immobilienaffäre

• Frankfurter Rundschau: Merz’ Pläne verletzen Grundrechte