A number of Germany’s federal ministers have taken to implicating foreigners in some of the country’s biggest problems. Here are several examples of leaders casting shade on foreigners from the recent news.
Germany’s conservative party leaders have a problem – they’re in charge now.
Under the leadership of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the conservative Christian Union parties (CDU/CSU) are now leading the federal black-red coalition government, with many of the Federal Cabinet’s positions filled by Union party politicians.
The conservatives fought hard to win back a leading position in Germany, and their success means they’re tasked with solving the country’s problems, and there are quite a few difficult problems to be dealt with.
Rather than keep their eyes focused on the tasks at hand, a number of conservative party leaders have made comments casting blame on others. In doing so, they’ve taken a page out of the populist playbook – reframing any given problem as one brought about or made worse by foreigners, and claiming they can fix it by cracking down on asylum seekers, legal migrants, and even international students.
Here are a few recent examples of CDU or CSU leaders blaming immigrants and foreigners for various issues.
‘Imported Antisemitism’
The most high-profile example came during Friedrich Merz’s visit to Washington D.C. to meet US President Trump, when the Chancellor suggested, in an interview with the right-wing television network Fox News, that Germany was dealing with “imported antisemitism”.
READ MORE: German Chancellor suggests immigrants have ‘imported antisemitism’
“We are doing everything we can to bring these numbers down,” Merz told Fox News. “We are prosecuting those who break the law, and frankly, we have a sort of imported antisemitism with this big number of migrants that we have within the last ten years.”
US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (L) shake hands during a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on June 5, 2025.(Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP)
The interviewer had referred to a report by RIAS (the Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism), which noted an 80 percent rise in antisemitic incidents between 2023 and 2024. While the report does note a marked increase in incidents attributed to “foreign ideology,” it nonetheless found that the primary motive behind antisemitic crimes remained right-wing extremist ideology (48 percent).
The phrase “imported antisemitism” in German (importierter Antisemitismus) has previously been called out by the independent organisation Unwort des Jahres as a discriminatory and malicious phrase used by the far-right .
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Education
In May, education minister Karin Prien (CDU) made a speech to Germany’s largest teachers’ union (GEW) in which she announced plans for sweeping reforms and said the government would “invest billions in Kitas and schools.”
READ MORE: What parents in Germany should know about the planned schools shake up
However, the implication that a relative decline in educational achievement in Germany can be blamed on the number of children who start school with a poor command of German is problematic.
While this is undoubtedly one issue facing German schools, it certainly isn’t the whole story.
Social inequality expert Marcel Helbig, from Germany’s Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories, pointed out that … “The performance at Gymnasien (academic secondary schools), where there are hardly any migrant kids, has also fallen very sharply.
“It is more than just a migrant-specific problem that we are dealing with here,” he added.
Prien also talked about mandatory support for children whom the tests identify as being behind in their development. Again, the implication seems to be that recent arrivals in the country are somehow unwilling to integrate or accept support on behalf of their children.
Healthcare
The Federal Ministry of Health recently confirmed that positions for more than 5,000 general practitioners (GP) were vacant in Germany at the end of 2023.
In response, Sepp Müller, deputy chairman of the Christian Democrat (CDU) parliamentary group, told Bild that his party was looking at making international medical students pay for their university tuition if they left Germany within five years of graduating.
As of now, it seems unlikely that the idea will become government policy. Instead, it feels like yet another attempt to frame a complex healthcare problem as a problem of immigration – of ungrateful foreigners exploiting German generosity.
READ ALSO: How foreign students contribute far more to Germany than they cost
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A toxic tone on the topic of immigration broadly
Zooming out a bit, the Union’s bigger election promise to crackdown on migration is based on an underlying presupposition that many of Germany’s problems would be solved if the country had less immigrants.
Merz has never made a secret of his desire to pursue a “migration turnaround”.
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt delivers a statement as he visits the border control station Kiefersfelden. Photo: Michaela Stache / AFP
On television in 2023, he insisted that asylum arrangements in Germany needed to be reviewed. On a program on Welt he said, “We need to talk about the pull factors here in Germany…”
He accused asylum seekers of “sitting at the doctor’s office and getting their teeth redone, while German citizens next door can’t get appointments.”
Germany’s interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, has echoed these words recently, describing his desire to “reduce the pull factors” in Germany. In practice, he has suggested, this means less “compassion” and more “order”.
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It appears that Merz and Dobrindt’s habit of talking about criminals and people who want to exploit Germany’s generosity has rubbed off on many of their colleagues, even when they are discussing topics that have little to do with immigration.
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