Four days before the Bundestag election, the Chancellor and his challenger meet on TV one last time. In addition to the migration, tax policy or citizens' reform, there is also room for jokes: Would Scholz zu Merz climb on the plane? And who is more lucky in love?
Maybe there is something? SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz and CDU/CSU Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz seem to have a certain trust. At the TV duel of “Welt” and “Bild”, Scholz answered the question of whether he would get into the machine to hobbyilot and aircraft owner Merz, clearly with “yes”. And pushed after: “I assume that he is rightly so.” And Merz would also take him with him – although: “It depends on where to where.” From Berlin already home.
That fit into the picture, because the CDU chairman wants to send the SPD chancellor home in the Bundestag election on Sunday, as he made clear at the beginning of the duel sent in the afternoon and in the evening. “Mr. Chancellor, there will be no wonder over the next four days,” said Merz, referring to the opinion surveys in which the Union is far ahead of the SPD. “Your chancellery should be over on Sunday.”
Merz proved that, conversely, at least a minimum level of trust is there, when he affirmed the question of whether he would go into the rowboat to Scholz. “And since I can swim quite well, even without a life jacket.” Here, too, it was not without a small tip. “I am usually a keyman when I row in pairs. I think that's pretty good,” said the Chancellor. That means: Scholz pretends the pace – which he wants to continue in the Chancellery after Sunday.
Investment premium against tax cuts
The moderator team – “BILD” editor -in -chief Marion Horn and “Welt” editor -in -chief Jan Philipp Burgard – not only asked soft topics. The differences between incumbent and challengers became once again clear. Example: What to do to get the ailing German economy back on growth course?
Scholz called the SPD's “Made-In-Germany bonus”, an investment bonus for companies and a reform of the debt brake. Merz countered: “This is the old song of the Social Democrats: higher taxes, higher public debt, higher government spending.” That couldn't be the solution. Down in energy prices, tax down, hard dismantling of bureaucracy – that is the solution.
Taxes down? Scholz became aggressive: “Mr. Merz would like to earn people who earn as much as he and me, or much more, 20 billion euros in taxes – 85,000 for a DAX board, 10 euros per month for a seller. This is not fine.”
Debate about increasing VAT
When asked to the candidates, Merz did not clear whether they excluded an increase in VAT. Scholz clearly affirmed this. Merz replied: “I don't want to increase VAT.” On the remarks of the moderators, he does not rule out an increase, he said: “We may also have to lead coalition negotiations.” However, he personally thinks an increase is the wrong way.
VAT is often an important topic in Bundestag election campaigns. Scholz warned that a “disaster” like in the 2005 election campaign should not be repeated. At that time, the Union had announced that he wanted to raise the VAT by two percentage points. The SPD, on the other hand, ran storm. Shortly afterwards, the grand coalition of exactly these two partners even decided to increase by three percentage points.
Sanctions for unwilleers to work
The SPD and the CDU man were closer together in the citizens' allowance. Both demanded tougher sanctions for those who are unwilling to work on this state service. “There are already cuts in performance, but they are to be tightened,” said Scholz. Merz emphasized that one had to say to a person who could work, but do not want to, “that the state is not willing to accept that longer”.
However, the way was controversial. Scholz proposed to make publicly funded job offers in order to be able to clearly prove that “someone apparently is pressing themselves”.
Merz rejected this model. “Give me the answer why this must be if we have 700,000 vacancies that cannot be filled. Why do you have to talk about public funding again and again and spend more money on this messed up system?” Answer Scholz: No master craftsman will give the state the task of demonstrating the proof that someone is pressing himself to take on a job.
Less irregular migration and more deportation
Sure: The issue of migration, which dominated the election campaign, could not be missing in this round either. Scholz referred to the initial successes in the push of the irregular migration and deportations, but admitted that they were not yet sufficient.
Merz became drastic: “In Germany we have about 500 officially known dangers, mostly from Afghanistan and Syria.” But you have no instrument on your hand to arrest and deport them. “They run around out there. And a district administrator from Baden-Württemberg tells me, that's not my wording: these are ticking time bombs.”
Merz also criticized the fact that Afghanistan was still brought to Germany earlier, especially for the Bundeswehr. “Did we get crazy?”
Relationship to the AfD
The topic of collaboration with the AfD was too tempting for Scholz so as not to address it again. “Tell it: You don't let the AfD vote as a chancellor,” he asked Merz. The latter then confirmed: “I would like to have a stable majority in the German Bundestag for a new government, and it will not be available with the AfD, neither directly nor indirectly.”
Cooperation with the AfD after the Bundestag election was again excluded: “I want to say that again very clearly so that there are really no misunderstandings, not even with the Federal Chancellor: there will be no cooperation with the AfD, and that is clear and final.”
Blows of fate and love
The answers of the two opponents were not really new to the hard issues – election campaigns consist of many repetitions. The private individual, which the editor -in -chief Horn and Burgard also asked. When asked which stroke of fate his life had particularly shaped, Scholz said: “My life was very successful in terms of my private life in terms of love.”
Merz, on the other hand, reported that the early death of two of his three siblings had left deep traces of the family. He does not often talk about that, but it is “experiences of my family who still sustainably sustainably”. When asked by the moderators, whether he is lucky in love, Merz said: “I would say that.”
