Enlarge image
CDU leader Merz in conversation with the sociologist Aladin El-Mafaalani at Markus Lanz
Photo: Markus Hertrich / ZDF
After attacks on police, fire and rescue services in several German cities on New Year's Eve, the CDU party leader sees a "veritable problem of a lack of integration".
Friedrich Merz said that on the ZDF talk show Markus Lanz.
He pointed out that many of the perpetrators of the Berlin riots on New Year's Eve had a migration background.
In addition, Merz complained that legal vacuums had developed in cities such as Berlin, Hamburg and Leipzig.
"I think we've looked the other way in Germany for too much time, too many years," said Merz.
The CDU leader also referred to "people who actually have no business in Germany, who we have tolerated here for a long time" and who would not be deported.
The problem with this group does not begin in Neukölln or Berlin, but with everyday disrespect.
Teachers at primary schools, for example, experience verbal violence on a daily basis.
»There it begins«
For example, there would be problems if teachers wanted to call the children to order and their fathers complained in the school as a result.
“Especially when it comes to teachers, that they correct their sons, the little pashas, from time to time.
That's where it starts," said Merz.
If you don't help the teachers to defend themselves against these phenomena, "then it will be eight-year-olds at school and then, in a few years, out on the street, 15-year-olds.
That's where the problem lies."
In a modified version of the quote that Merz published on Twitter, he omitted the designation of the "little pashas".
Lanz had previously asked Merz to comment on a tweet by his party colleague Christoph de Vries, in which he had demanded that after the attacks on the police and fire brigade also "talk about the role of people, phenotype: West Asian, darker skin type".
Merz made no reference to the tweet.
During the broadcast, the sociologist Aladin El-Mafaalani from the Institute for Educational Science at the University of Osnabrück contradicted Merz's "Pascha" statement.
Merz talks to him “a bit much about people of Arabic origin”.
The police arrested a number of other nationalities during the New Year's Eve riots.
"Well, you'll probably have to take that back in a week or two."
The economist Marcel Fratzscher, also a guest on the show, commented on Merz's statements after the show on Twitter.
"I'm very upset that I kept silent about these statements," says Fratzscher.
The statements are "populism, because Mr. Merz implicitly and explicitly generalized from a small minority to all people with Arabic roots".
Former Berlin Greens MP Sabine Bangert described the statements on Twitter as "repulsive".
Left-wing MEP Özlem Alev Demirel personally attacked Merz on Twitter.
There are certainly "people who think they are pashas and petty criminals, but the real criminals are at BlackRock," said Demirel, referring to Merz's previous employer.
Left board member Luigi Pantisano wrote on Twitter that Merz was a “racist” for him.
First name request from the Berlin CDU for Merz "irrelevant"
The group also dealt with the request made by the Berlin CDU for the first names of the suspects in the Berlin New Year's Eve riots.
So far, the police had only informed about the 18 different nationalities of the 145 people arrested.
Merz ultimately called the result of such an evaluation "irrelevant".
For him, the most important thing is that a majority of this group has a migration background.
Merz also said on the show that he did not place migrants under general suspicion.
»I'm not one of those people who say in general: Those who live here as foreigners are not integrated.
This is nonsense."
fek/dpa