Immigration marks the last face-to-face between Merz and Scholz before the elections

BerlinMigration policy remains one of the main issues that will decide the vote of Germans in this Sunday's elections. It is also an issue that continues to divide and pit the outgoing Chancellor, the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, against the conservative candidate Friedrich Merz, as was made clear on Wednesday evening in their second and final electoral duel before the election.

Scholz and Merz, who is the favourite in the polls, They have tried to convince undecided Germans to vote for their respective parties this Sunday, in an electoral debate organized by the newspapers World and Image. According to a survey by the YouGov polling institute for the German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa), 13 percent of voters are still considering deciding who they will vote for in the coming days. Seven percent will wait until election day to decide for one party or the other.

Although the Social Democrats are third in the polls, behind the conservatives and the far right, Scholz expressed confidence that an SPD victory is still possible. In this way, his party would not only be able to lead a future coalition government, but would also prevent "even the slightest collaboration." between the conservative CDU-CSU and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, the chancellor explained.

"No miracle will happen in the next four days. His term as chancellor should end on Sunday," Merz reacted. Polls predict the worst election result for Scholz's SPD since 1887.

The outgoing chancellor has defended the migration and economic policy of the traffic light coalition, named after the colours of the parties that formed it (social democrats, liberals and greens) against calling early elections.

Breaking "a taboo"

Scholz has accused Merz of having broken "a taboo" during the election campaign by managing to get a five-point plan to fight illegal immigration approved in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, with the help of votes from the far right. The conservative candidate reiterated that "there has not been any collaboration with the AfD and there will not be." Merz has recalled that in the last three years, since Scholz has been chancellor, the far right has doubled its support in the polls. The CDU-CSU candidate has attributed this to the policy of the traffic light coalition that "with unresolved migration and a miserable economic policy, has made this party so strong."

Scholz, for his part, has promised that he would not form a coalition with Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) or with L'Esquerra to remain chancellor. "I can't imagine it. These are parties that, for example, want to leave Ukraine alone," the outgoing chancellor recalled.

"In the next four years we have to solve two major problems in this country: migration and the economy," Merz reminded voters. The CDU-CSU candidate has taken on the role of my fault Merz criticised the migration policy of former conservative chancellor Angela Merkel, without naming her, but said that his party "has corrected its course". Merkel welcomed 1.2 million refugees and asylum seekers between 2015 and 2016, most of them Syrian, which has contributed, according to experts, to the rise of the extreme right in the polls.

The recent attacks

Following the recent attacks in Munich and Magdeburg by migrants, Merz asked Scholz what had happened to the "large-scale" deportations that the Chancellor had promised more than a year ago.

The conservative candidate believes that Scholz should have followed the example of the Danish Social Democratic government. "Denmark has largely solved the problem with a very tough migration policy, the right-wing populists have disappeared," the conservative candidate recalled.

If elections were held in Germany today, the conservative CDU-CSU would obtain 29% of the votes; the extreme right 21%; the Social Democratic Party (SPD) 16%; the Greens 13%; the Left 7% and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) 5%. The FDP, a liberal party, is expected to be excluded from the Bundestag after failing to clear the 5% threshold for a seat, according to the latest poll.