Planned socialization ban: Friedrich Merz as election assistant for the Left

After the CDU's electoral defeat, the Chancellor has a plan: He wants to quickly introduce a law that prohibits the socialization of housing companies, which the Left wants to implement after its election victory in Berlin. Geez!

Experience shows that if Friedrich Merz has a plan, it can backfire. Regardless of whether you think socialization is right, whether the prospect of a red-green-red government makes you dream or shudder: such a law would be democratically questionable and legally delicate. And from the Union's perspective it would also be a strategic mistake.

There is a phrase that comes to mind: “If elections changed anything, they would be banned.” The sentence is cynical and wrong, but the federal government would reinforce the disillusionment with politics that it expresses with a ban.

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One can consider socialization to be the wrong lever against high rents. But there is no denying that the demand has great democratic legitimacy. The people of Berlin decided to do so in a referendum.

Now there is no democratic right to have a non-binding referendum implemented. But it is one thing to ignore him like the incumbent state government. It is more serious to want to prohibit implementation before a law has been passed.

It is still unclear how Merz actually wants to implement the ban. In principle, the federal government can govern the states, and that is a good thing with regard to Saxony-Anhalt. Legally, a blanket ban on socialization is unlikely to be possible. It would be possible to make it more complicated and expensive through a federal law. But that would be legally and politically controversial.

And that's why Merz is making a strategic mistake. A possible red-green-red government in Berlin can still fail on many points: because of left-wing anti-Semitism and the lack of sovereignty in dealing with it, or because of a campaign that a left-wing government absolutely wants to prevent and is only just gaining momentum.

If the federal government decides to ban socialization, it could close ranks in Berlin. The Greens, for example, will then find it even more difficult to elect a CDU man to govern despite the left-wing majority in the city. It would further alienate the Berlin SPD from its comrades in the federal government. A new, red-green-red government could first sue against the ban, would receive a reprieve until a legal decision on the controversial issue of socialization and could implement left-wing rent policy until then.

And Friedrich Merz? At the end of his political career he would once again become an election worker for the left.