Criticism of the Chancellor's appearance in the general debate

Christian Teevs, SPIEGEL:

»Yes, that was an unusually defensive appearance by the Chancellor today. I thought he actually talked to the AfD throughout his entire speech. He tried to confront the AfD, so to speak, with statements from them about remigration and artificial intelligence.

But it all seemed very defensive. The Chancellor did not exude any self-confidence in the sense of: This is where I stand, this is my policy. Rather, he has taken up the AfD's positions very strongly and tried to overcome them. And that seemed kind of strange because this is the general debate on the budget.

Normally the opposition attacks the government and here it seemed more like the Chancellor was attacking the opposition AfD party. And this is to be understood in the aftermath of the election in Saxony-Anhalt. But still, I didn't think the Chancellor made a strong appearance.

The atmosphere today is particularly heated. The AfD generally attracts attention in the plenary session with heckling. But today it was particularly aggressive. The President of the Bundestag, Julia Klöckner, interrupted several times and then even threatened to throw out the AfD. She said "We are not on the football field here" because it was so loud and so aggressive from the AfD against the Chancellor and against the federal government. And that was a new quality today.«