Merz and Söder call for decisions on migration

Following the knife attack in Solingen, the leaders of the CDU and CSU parties are demanding decisions on migration policy. "Enough is enough!", said CDU leader Friedrich Merz at an event during the CDU Saxony state election campaign in Dresden. "More is no longer acceptable, from mere empty words, mere slogans, stupid phrases to purely symbolic political decisions."

On Friday evening, three people were killed with a knife at a town festival in Solingen, North Rhine-Westphalia, and eight people were injured, some of them seriously. The suspected perpetrator is a 26-year-old Syrian who is now in custody. The federal prosecutor's office is investigating him for murder and on suspicion of membership of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist militia - which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Söder: We don't need admonishers, we need doers

Also with a view to previous attacks, CSU leader Markus Söder criticized the fact that people are always showing concern, complaining and saying that they want to change something, and in the end nothing changes in Germany. "We don't need any more admonishers now, we finally need doers for our country."

Merz once again said that it was not the knives that were the problem, "but the people who carry them around with them, and we need to talk about that now". He had already made similar comments in his email newsletter on Sunday. "We want nothing more and nothing less than for the Federal Chancellor to fulfill his oath of office and avert harm from the German people," said the CDU/CSU parliamentary group leader. And if Scholz no longer has a majority in his own coalition to do so, "then I would offer him that the 197 members of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group would follow any sensible proposal".

Scholz should dissolve the coalition constraint, release the vote, "and then we will find a majority in the German Bundestag for a sensible policy", said Merz. "We need to make decisions in Germany now and stop just talking around it."