By Tilman Blasshofer and Frank Simon
SAARBRUECKEN, Germany (Reuters) -Germany and Europe must do more to reinvigorate their economies to remain a pole of attraction in a world increasingly dominated by autocracies, Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned in a speech commemorating the 35th anniversary of German reunification.
In a speech seemingly designed to rise above the polarising rhetoric that has increasingly shaped German politics in recent years, including in his own election campaign this year, Merz said it was for the population as well as politicians to address the structural problems Germany faced.
“New alliances of autocracies are forming against us and attacking liberal democracy as a way of life,” he told an audience that included President Emmanuel Macron at a ceremony in Saarbruecken on the border with France.
“The global economic order is being rewritten. Customs barriers are being erected and selfishness is growing,” he said. “This too is weakening us economically.”
Merz took office in February after a campaign that was marked by at times emotional rhetoric, both from him and his opponents, on migration, at a time when Germany’s export-dependent high-tech economy faces its biggest challenge in decades.
While immigration numbers have been falling for some years, surveys show it ranks high among public concerns, and the far-right Alternative for Germany, for which migration is a central topic, leads Merz’s conservatives in some polls.
The economy, badly hit by U.S. protectionism and the competitive onslaught from China, has registered barely any growth since the end of the pandemic, contributing to a broad mood of malaise.
“Years of irregular, undirected migration to Germany have polarised our country and dug new divisions into our society,” Merz said, while asking fellow citizens recognise the value of living in a democracy governed by the rule of law.
“Politics, the state, the government have their responsibility,” he said. “But the scale of the challenge must be understood by us all, by every citizen in our country.”
Reunification Day commemorates the 1990 end of the division of Germany into a western democratic state and an eastern, Soviet-controlled dictatorship, symbolised by the Berlin Wall dividing the capital.
(Additional reporting by Andreas Rinke, writing by Thomas EscrittEditing by Tomasz Janowski)
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