Media and Minorities

170
Peter Widmann
In addition, the CSU faced a strategic challenge on the federal level. In the
Bundestag elections in October 2013, the coalition of the CDU, the CSU, and
the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) had failed to win a majority.
As a result, Chancellor Angela Merkel formed a grand coalition with
the Social Democrats. The CSU was also a part of this coalition, but the government
no longer needed it to ensure its majority. The party therefore lost
influence. In the previous CDU/CSU-FDP coalition, the Interior Minister
had been a member of the CSU, but when the federal cabinet was reshuffled
in December 2013 the party did not receive a single important ministry. It
had to settle for the Ministries of Agriculture, Transport, and Development.
The German media painted the CSU as the loser of the coalition’s negotiations.
With its focus on poverty-driven migration, the party attempted to
reverse its dwindling importance and show that it was still capable of setting
the agenda. The official name of the January 2014 retreat in Kreuth was
therefore “The CSU Is Setting the Pace for the Grand Coalition.”28 Against
this backdrop, putting immigration on the federal government’s agenda
and initiating an amendment to the law was an important achievement for
the CSU.
From the CSU’s perspective, their self-presentation strategy was a success,
but it provoked criticism from more than just the other political parties
in Germany. Migration researchers and social-welfare organizations pointed
out that the CSU’s claims had no empirical basis. In response to the Süddeutsche
Zeitung’s coverage of the party’s policy paper, many articles cited
studies and reports that showed that immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania
were not placing an excessive burden on the German social-welfare system
and were not expected to do so in the future.29 The authors of these studies
worked for various institutions, including the Bonn Institute for the Study
of Labor, the Berlin Institute for Employment Research, the Expert Council of
German Foundations on Integration and Migration, and the European Commission.
When the German Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière (CDU),
presented the final report of the committee of cabinet undersecretaries at a
press conference in August 2014, he emphasized that, despite the problems in
some localities, poverty-driven immigration was not a widespread phenomenon
in Germany. According to de Maizière, the government had responded
28 CSU regional group, “Die CSU-Landesgruppe ist Taktgeber der Großen Koalition,” CSU
conference in Wildbad Kreuth from 7 to 9 January 2014, accessed 27 March 2015, www.
csu-landesgruppe.de/sites/default/files/uploads/bericht_aus_kreuth_2014.pdf.
29 For example, Daniel Bax, “Von wegen Armutsmigration,” tageszeitung, 28 December 2013,
www.taz.de/!130016/; Jannis Brühl and Kathrin Haimerl, “Mythos Armutsmigration,”
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 3 January 2015, www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/einwanderer-ausosteuropa-mythos-armutsmigration-1.1854451.
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