Sven Schulze in an interview: CDU top candidate on migration, AfD and BSW

In an interview with WELT TV, the CDU Prime Minister and top candidate for the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, Sven Schulze, was convinced that the election would be determined by regional issues. “It’s about Saxony-Anhalt,” he said, pointing out that the end of the personnel debates in federal politics had been helpful. Schulze’s central statements at a glance.

Migration

Schulze praised the federal government's migration policy. In Saxony-Anhalt there were only around 1,000 new arrivals in the first half of the year. That is “a fraction of what we have had in recent years”. The last time so few came to the country was in 2011 and 2012. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has made the issue a top priority and that has consequences: “The migration turnaround is here.”

Economy

Schulze also had good words for the federal government's economic policy and praised the abolition of the gas storage levy. This contributed to securing the chemical industry in Saxony-Anhalt.

“The fuel prices are currently so high that they are unsustainable for us in the regional states in the long term,” Schulze continued. However, he rejected an excess profits tax and instead pointed to the responsibility of companies.

AfD

“If there is one thing that didn't go well, it was that the AfD got caught up in the feeling of telling people that Germany was a relegated country,” Schulze said. "This is not Saxony-Anhalt," he said and asked which past the AfD wanted to go back to: "To the 90s? Where we had to tell everyone here, it's better to go to the West because we don't have a job? Or back to the GDR?"

Schulze also criticized the AfD's proximity to Russia. With regard to a cup from the Russian army, which the AfD politician Hans-Thomas Tillschneider showed in a video, he said: “Anyone who shows something like that openly wants something like that too.” One cannot accuse the AfD of not saying what it wants. “I don’t want the Russian army on our soil again,” said the CDU politician.

The AfD also does not offer any solutions, but simply describes problems.

Formation of government

“I don’t want my homeland to become a field of experimentation,” said Schulze with a view to a possible AfD government and appealed to voters: “If you want to prevent the AfD from getting the majority, supporting my party is the right way.” He did not elaborate on how he plans to form a government after the election.

In the direction of the BSW, he said that Sahra Wagenknecht was not concerned with “moving our country forward, but only with regaining influence in Berlin.” If the BSW “comes in, then they will support Mr. Siegmund”. Wagenknecht is running a "crazy election campaign. All the issues she addresses have nothing to do with Saxony-Anhalt."