'Ask your daughters': Merz defends use of far-right rhetoric to call for deportations

Critics have accused Germany's chancellor, Friedrich Merz, of adopting “dangerous” rhetoric on immigration, after he championed “very large scale” expulsions of people from cities - and claimed that anyone with daughters would agree with him.

- Deborah Cole Berlin

Merz, who took office in May with a pledge to beat back the rise of the far-right Alternative fiir Deutschland (AfD) party, chastised a reporter who asked if he wished to revise his hard-line remarks on migration from last week in light of widespread criticism, or apologise for them.

"I don’t know if you have children, and daughters among them,” Merz said to the journalist on Monday.

“Ask your daughters, I suspect you'll get a pretty loud and clear answer. I have nothing to take back; to the contrary I stress: we have to change something.”

Members of Merz’s own ruling coalition yesterday joined the left-leaning opposition in accusing him of taking a page from extremist parties, whose claims that women and girls are being targeted by migrants with sexual violence have become a global far-right rallying cry.