The firewall has to go because it doesn’t keep the AfD down? Anyone who calls for this – like Juli Zeh – argues like everyone who gives up resolutions before the new year begins.
© Hannes Jung for DIE ZEIT
The so-called rough nights between Christmas and New Year’s Eve serve to mentally prepare for the coming year. Politically minded people are currently thinking about the upcoming election year of 2026, in which the… AfD threatens to achieve record results in five federal states. In view of this, anyone who calls for the firewall to finally be abandoned is behaving as if one were throwing all good resolutions overboard before New Year’s Eve without even giving them a chance.
The headline “(Person XY in public life) calls for an end to the firewall” has become its own journalistic genre in recent months. To name just a few examples: Manfred Weber, head of the European People’s Party, Marie-Christine OstermannPresident of the Association of Family Businesses, or the political scientist Philip Manow most recently took part in the anti-firewall choir. Now the writer and Federal Republican heckler has too July toe reported to speak. “The attempt to keep the AfD down with the firewall has achieved nothing over the last ten years,” she says in one taz-Interview.
