German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been trading blows with her election rival Martin Schulz in a live TV debate three weeks before the country’s federal election.
The pair sparred over the right course of action in North Korea, following today’s nuclear bomb test.
President Donald Trump “is not the right person to solve this conflict,” said Schulz, leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
“Last time, by tweeting, he brought us to the brink of a crisis.”
We will need to work with other partners including Canada to solve this crisis, Schulz continued. “The problem we have with Trump is that there is uncertainty … we never know when he will tweet next time.”
Merkel responded with more caution. “I don’t think we can solve this without the US President, but we will only consider a peaceful, diplomatic solution,” she said.
“We need the US as a power for peace,” she said, “and we need to do everything possible to get them on the right and sensible path.”
The pair are being questioned in a studio in Berlin over 90 minutes by two sets of moderators.
Turkey
Schulz also took a harder line than his rival on Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Relations between Germany and Turkey have deteriorated significantly over the last months.
Negotiations for Turkey’s accession to the EU must be stopped, he said.
“All our basic values are called into question,” by Erdogan’s regime, he continued.
He also called for accession payments to Turkey to be stopped, describing Erdogan as an “autocratic ruler.”
Merkel agreed that accession negotiations should be paused but insisted that “we need to continue talking” with Turkey.
“I do not want to stop diplomatic relations with Turkey,” she said.
Refugees
The debate opened with a series of questions on Merkel’s refugee policy, for which she has been widely criticized after one million refugees entered the country in 2015.
Integrating these refugees is “a very big task,” Merkel admitted — but defended her decision to allow an indefinite number of refugees into Germany in September of that year.
Schulz criticized that decision, arguing that Merkel should not have acted without support from other European countries. “People who flee from ISIS, from mass rape and mass violence come here and we are ready to protect them,” he said. “We are proud of that in Germany.”
But “in terms of migration, we face great challenges,” Schulz said. “Integration is the task of a generation.”
The stakes are high
Tonight’s encounter — the only head-to-head debate of the campaign — was billed as a moment of potential peril for the current Chancellor and a moment of opportunity for Schulz.
Merkel is running for her fourth term in office and polls show her Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU) as the clear frontrunners for the September 24 vote. But Merkel is not naturally combative and has been criticized for barely mentioning her opponent’s name during the campaign.
She has also been accused of threatening to boycott the so-called “duel” if the question-and-answer format was changed to allow the candidates to debate each other directly.
Merkel did not deny that claim when questioned about it at her annual press conference last week.
While debating is not Merkel’s forte, her opponent has shown plenty of rhetorical firepower on the campaign trail.
Schulz also has less to lose, with polls showing his party 10 to 15 points behind Merkel’s conservatives.
Little known to most German voters before he was elected party leader in January this year, he is looking to make a strong impression tonight.
Around half of Germany’s 30 million eligible voters were planning to tune in for the debate, according to a poll by the Forsa Institute, commissioned by STERN Magazine.
Of those, about 22% said they would likely make up their minds on who to vote for, based on their performance in the debate.
According to Forsa’s Peter Matuschek, Merkel’s lead over her past opponents has dropped after her debates.
“She is not a good debater, everybody knows this. And that might be an advantage for her opponent if he is in good shape that night,” Matuschek told CNN.