23 October 2025
Merz’s ‘Cityscape’ score doubles as VC warns against division
Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Wednesday doubled down on his negative comments about urban migration despite a deputy’s warning against stoking social division.
Speaking on the sidelines of the West Balkans summit in London, Merz said Europeans’ freedoms were being restricted by migrants who do not follow the law.
“Many of them also determine the public image in our cities,” he said. “That’s why so many people in Germany and other EU countries – and not just in Germany – are now afraid to move around in public places,” the Chancellor said.
He said those places include railway stations, underground trains and parks.
“It affects the entire neighborhood, which also causes big problems for our police,” he said.
His comments followed last week’s comment that migrants had somehow polluted the German “city landscape”, which drew widespread criticism, even from members of his own conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) party, and led to protests outside the CDU’s Berlin headquarters.
Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil previously warned that politicians “have to be very careful what kind of discussion we start when we suddenly divide people into us and them, people with a family history of migration and people without migration.”
“I want to live in a country where politics builds bridges and brings society together rather than dividing it with words,” said Klingbeil, who leads the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) in Germany’s coalition.
Also serves as Government and Finance Minister.
“I want to live in a country where appearance doesn’t determine whether you fit into the image of the city or not,” he said.