Speaking to The Telegraph, CDU interior affairs spokesman Alexander Throm said Leitkulture is essentially the principle that migrants and foreigners should adopt German cultural values and not the other way around.
“It is the way that we live in Germany as a cultural nation,” he said. “It concerns not only our languages and customs, but also our cultural and historical foundations. It ultimately means that people, no matter why they come to Germany, orient themselves towards this cultural basis, not the other way around.”
Other key aspects of Leitkultur include equal rights for women, the rule of democracy and the country's post-war constitution as well as Israel's right to exist after Hamas' October 7 massacre, per the outlet. The phrase became popular by CDU's leader Freidrich Merz who wrote in a newspaper two decades ago that "immigrants who want to live here permanently must adapt to an established liberal German dominant culture."
This stance is akin to the US President-elect Donald Trump's strong focus on eliminating illegal immigration, particularly through the Southern border, and encouraging migrants to become legal and adopt American values.
Like the US, mass migration has also become a huge problem throughout Europe and has fueled the rise of populist parties in Germany as well as Austria, Romania, and Slovakia. The Telegraph reports that an estimated 1.93 million people migrated to Germany in 2023 and 1.2 million people migrated to Britain the same year.
Throm said that if the CDU is victorious in the election, Germany will start turning non-European refugees away from its border but will still accept Ukrainians in particular due to a "special duty" towards them. “It is clear that we stand by our European neighbours and by refugees. But it’s also clear that, with every further movement of refugees in our direction, we must ensure that they are appropriately distributed in all European countries,” he said. "It’s also clear that we, due to our special duty to our Ukrainian neighbours, must be even more restrictive when it comes to refugees from all other countries in the world, especially outside Europe."
