Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has publicly criticised the Merz government’s decision to turn away asylum-seekers at the national border. Speaking in an ARD documentary aired on 30 June, Merkel said that anyone requesting asylum must be given a formal procedure, even "directly at the border". Her remarks revive the inclusive stance she adopted during the 2015 refugee crisis and directly challenge the harder line taken by her successor and party colleague. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s office rejected the reproach. Chief of Staff Thorsten Frei argued that applicants arriving via safe third countries are "clearly not fugitives" and defended summary rejections as necessary border management. The policy remains in place despite a Berlin administrative court ruling earlier this month that found the pushback of three Somali migrants unlawful. The migration dispute set the tone for Merz’s first general debate in the Bundestag on 9 July. AfD opposition leader Alice Weidel opened the session with a 20-minute broadside, calling Merz a "Lügenkanzler" who had broken promises on debt limits and taxes and describing his €850 billion borrowing plan as a "Staatsstreich". She also attacked Berlin’s military support for Ukraine and branded social-welfare payments "Migrantengeld". Merz answered directly, labelling Weidel’s address a "purely nationalist speech" filled with "half-truths and personal defamation". He insisted his coalition is reducing illegal migration and delivering an economic turnaround, adding that the AfD is "slowly but surely losing the political ammunition it owes its existence to." Merkel’s intervention and the heated parliamentary exchange underscore how migration policy is reshaping German politics, pitting the former chancellor against her own party’s new leadership while giving the far-right AfD fresh ammunition against a government still in its first quarter under Merz.