BERLIN, Feb 20 (Reuters) – Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed on Friday not to let the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “ruin” Germany \u200cand told his fellow conservatives to prepare for a raw \u200cnew climate of great-power competition.<\/p>\n
Merz’s message to the Christian Democrat (CDU) party’s conference in Stuttgart \u200breiterated points he made at last weekend’s Munich Security Conference alongside calls for economic reform, and a rejection of antisemitism and the AfD, which is aiming to win its first state election this year.<\/p>\n
“We will \u200cnot allow these people \u2060from the so-called Alternative for Germany to ruin our country,” he told party delegates, who welcomed former chancellor \u2060Angela Merkel with a storm of applause on her first visit to the conference since stepping down in 2021.<\/p>\n
Merz, trailing badly in the polls \u200bahead of \u200ba string of state elections this \u200byear, said he accepted criticism \u200cthat the reforms announced during last year’s election campaign had been slower than initially communicated.<\/p>\n
He promised to push ahead with efforts to cut bureaucracy, bring down energy costs and foster investment, saying that economic prosperity was vital to Germany’s security.<\/p>\n
He also pledged further reforms of \u200cthe welfare state and said new proposals \u200bfor a reform of the pension system \u200bwould be presented, following \u200ba revolt by younger members of his own party \u200cin a bruising parliamentary battle last \u200byear.<\/p>\n
The elections begin \u200bnext month with the western states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate before a further round later in the year, one of them \u200bin the eastern \u200cstate of Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD hopes to win its \u200bfirst state ballot.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by James Mackenzie and Friederike Heine, Editing \u200bby Linda Pasquini and Philippa Fletcher)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN, Feb 20 (Reuters) – Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed on Friday not to let the far-right Alternative for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":777175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1945,1824,14791,226809,141645],"class_list":["post-777174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-germany","tag-munich-security-conference","tag-party-delegates","tag-welfare-state"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116103174261906237","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}