Yahoo Finance Outrage in Germany as Merkel's successor suggests curbing political debate online
The head of Germany’s governing party is under fire for suggesting tougher regulations on political debate online during elections just a day after her party suffered major losses in European polls.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who replaced Angela Merkel as head of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) last year, floated the idea of creating new rules for election periods governing “opinion formers” on the internet on Monday.
She made the comments in response to a viral video by German YouTube star Rezo last week, which accused the Christian and Social Democrats of dividing Germany.
The YouTuber urged viewers not to vote for the two major parties in the European parliamentary elections over the weekend, with the hour-long video viewed more than 12 million times so far.
Germany’s two ruling parties did then suffer major losses, putting the coalition government in Berlin at risk of collapse.
READ MORE: Europe’s centrist parties suffer losses in EU elections
Politicians across the spectrum expressed their disbelief that the CDU leader would call for what they effectively see as curbs on free speech. By Tuesday afternoon, the top three trending tags on German Twitter were #AKKRuecktritt (AKKresignation), #AKKgate, and #Meinungsmache (opinion building), respectively.
Niema Movassat, the leader of the Left in parliament, tweeted: "The statement of the CDU leader AKK today on comments by influencers is an unprecedented attack on freedom of expression.”
FDP leader Christian Lindner tweeted: "@akk is considering the regulation of opinion before elections ... I can hardly believe this. On the contrary, we need more open debate, including in social media.”
Lawyer Joachim Wieland said her suggestion was questionable from a constitutional point of view, telling Handelsblatt: "What Mrs. Kramp-Karrenbauer calls opinion-building is an expression of constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and of the press."
Kramp-Karrenbauer responded to the criticism on Twitter, saying that free expression was a “higher good of democracy.”
She went on: “When influential journalists or YouTubers call for non-voting or even the demolition of democratic middle parties, that is a matter of political culture. It is the parties in the middle that defend democratic values every day."
READ MORE: ‘A decisive moment’: what the election results mean for Europe
The big election triumph in Germany at the weekend went to the Greens, which scooped second place with 20.5% of the vote. They finished a narrow second to the CDU, which won 28.9%, in a significant drop on the 35% it won in the 2014 European election.
Germany’s two biggest parties, the CDU and Social Democrats (SPD) lost a combined one million voters to the Greens in the European election, mainly younger voters. The Social Democrats won just over 15% overall and took a second beating in the Bremen state election on Sunday.
Kramp-Karrenbauer took over the CDU party leadership from Angela Merkel last year.
She is a seen as a strong contender to become the next chancellor of Germany, either when Merkel’s final term ends in 2021 or before that if the governing coalition collapses and snap elections are called.
READ MORE: Merkel’s legacy as the most powerful woman in Europe plans to step down
