CDU MP Hendrik Hoppenstedt calls the firewall term “toxic”

The former Minister of State in the Chancellery and current CDU member of the Bundestag, Hendrik Hoppenstedt, criticized the term “firewall”. "I think the term is toxic," he told the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung. "We get the impression that we are offended because a supposedly bourgeois-conservative force is contesting our role."

Basically, the distinction is “absolutely correct” because there is almost no overlap in content with the AfD. But the CDU needs to explain why people are staying away from the party. "Europe, the euro, the ties to the West and the Christian view of humanity are the core DNA of the CDU," said Hoppenstedt: "If Ms. Weidel wants to deport all Syrians out of Schengen and the euro or across the board, it is clear that there can be no cooperation with us."

Hoppenstedt was Minister of State under Angela Merkel from 2018 to 2021 and was in discussion as Minister of the Chancellery under Friedrich Merz. The politician from the Hanover region is one of the four parliamentary managing directors of the Union faction in the Bundestag.

The CDU continually discusses how hard – and with what words – one should differentiate itself from the AfD. Thuringia's Prime Minister Mario Voigt, then still the CDU leader in his state, had already said in an interview with SPIEGEL in 2023: "A normal citizen can't understand the term firewall." The CDU leadership speaks "plainly when dealing with the AfD, no one shakes."

The head of the Saxon government, Michael Kretschmer, criticized the term in July of this year for other reasons: Anyone who still talks about a fire wall has "not recognized the signs of the times." As a CDU you have to “talk to everyone who wants to talk,” he told the Handelsblatt. Most recently, Hesse's Prime Minister Boris Rhein (CDU) spoke out in favor of less exclusion of the AfD in the Bundestag. She should also be able to chair the specialist committees. Criticism of his proposal also came from within his own ranks.