Statements by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz about the negative impact of migration on German cities will have economic consequencesthe president of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) Marcel Fratzscher said on Wednesday. TASR informs about it according to the reports of the agencies DPA and Reuters.
- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz commented on the negative consequences of migration.
- The DIW president criticized Merz for his polarizing statements.
- Merz linked changes in the ethnic composition of cities to crime.
- His statements provoked criticism from the public and politicians.
- The IW Institute emphasized the importance of skilled immigration for the economy.
“His recent statements are exacerbating the polarization of society and causing significant economic damage,” Fratzscher told the German economic daily Handelsblatt. “The chancellor’s message weakens Germany’s welcoming culture and will worsen the shortage of skilled workers in Germany in the coming years,” he added.
Merz said last week that his government is trying to correct the failures of previous governments, pointing to “an ongoing problem in our cityscapes”. The remark sparked a wave of criticism from the public, who believed that Merz was alluding to the changing ethnic makeup of German cities and linking it to an increase in crime.
When the German leader was asked by a reporter on Monday what exactly he meant by his comments, Merz responded by saying: “Ask your daughters if you have any”. Opposition politicians seized on the “daughters” remark, seeing it as a reference to a favorite far-right motif that portrays migrants as a particular danger to German-born white women.
According to Fratzscher, the chancellor sees the problem in the fact that Germany is a country of immigrants and that, according to him, the image of the city is naturally shaped by people with a migrant background. According to Merz, the federal government is making some progress in migration policy. “Of course, we still have this problem with the image of the city, which is why the Federal Minister of the Interior facilitates and carries out large-scale deportations,” he said.
This statement also outraged the public and caused a lot of criticism from the younger coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and partly from its own conservative ranks.
The German Economic Institute (IW) therefore called for greater differentiation in light of the heated debate. “We cannot emphasize this enough: In the migration debate, too little distinction is made between immigration of skilled workers on the one hand and people coming to Germany for humanitarian or other reasons,” Knut Bergmann, director of IW’s Berlin branch, told Handelsblatt. At the same time, he emphasized that from the point of view of the economy, the immigration of qualified labor is undoubtedly important for Germany.
