Merkel allies lambasted for immigrant language scold

BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Bavarian allies have issued a call for immigrants to speak German at home, touching off a hailstorm of protest and ridicule on social media Sunday.

Amid a national debate on integration, the Christian Social Union, one of three parties in Merkel’s ruling coalition, drafted a motion saying that foreigners seeking permanent residency “should be encouraged to speak German in public and in private with their families”.

The proposal will be debated Monday by CSU leaders ahead of a party conference at the end of the week in Nuremberg.

Yasmin Fahimi, general secretary of the Social Democrats, another party in Merkel’s government, blasted the motion saying it had chilling historical echoes.

“The CSU has arrived in Absurdistan. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so dangerous,” she told German news agency DPA.

“State regulation of what may happen in people’s sitting rooms — I thought we had left those times behind us.”

Merkel’s own Christian Democrats slammed the call as backward.

“It’s not politicians’ business if I speak Latin, Klingon or Hessian at home,” the party’s general secretary Peter Tauber tweeted.

The proposal even inspired a mocking hashtag on Twitter, #YallaCSU, with users poking fun of the thick Bavarian dialect. It was trending in third place in Germany on Sunday.

“Does Bavarian count as German?” user @GroenieSF asked.

Yalla means “come on” or “let’s go” in Arabic and has been adopted in German street slang.

Despite the criticism, CSU general secretary Andreas Scheuer said the party would stand by its motion, calling it “well prepared and widely backed”.

The 34-nation Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development reported last week that Germany has become the main destination for migrants within the European Union. It is also the world’s largest recipient of new asylum seekers.

The influx has not produced the intense backlash seen in Britain and France, where anti-immigration parties have made strong gains.

But it has nevertheless fuelled a heated debate about a failure to integrate into German society groups of immigrants who have in some cases lived in the country for generations.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a newspaper interview on Sunday that both France and Italy needed to do more on the reform front to ensure that their 2015 budgets respected European Union fiscal rules.

Last month, the European Commission postponed until March a decision on whether the budgets of both countries conformed with EU rules, while making clear that France was at risk of “non-compliance”.

Unless further steps are taken by the new deadline, the Commission could fine France for falling short of its deficit-cutting obligations and put Italy under a disciplinary process because of its debt levels.

Merkel, in an interview with German daily Die Welt, said giving France and Italy more time to finalise their reform plans was defensible.

But she then added: “The Commission has made clear what has been put on the table so far is insufficient. I would agree with this.” Last year, the Commission won new powers to assess draft national budgets to ensure they are in line with EU agreements.

But insisting that countries introduce additional reforms remains politically sensitive.

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said last week during a visit to Berlin that France would do what was necessary to meet its EU obligations but that boosting growth had to be the top priority.

A day later, he announced France was aiming to cut its deficit to 4.1 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015, compared to a previous goal of 4.3 per cent, thanks to extra savings.

France initially pledged to bring its deficit down to the EU limit of 3 per cent by 2013 but has now acknowledged that it won’t reach that threshold until 2017.