BERLIN — Germany’s former leader Angela Merkel has exposed a deep rift within the country’s conservative movement, slamming her party’s top brass over how it’s handling the rise of the far right.  The anti-migrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has been gaining ground in the polls in recent months and is now in second place ahead of Germany’s federal election scheduled for Feb. 23. That poses big questions for the mainstream parties, notably Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is currently the frontrunner.  For decades, Germany’s history has led mainstream politicians to uphold a so-called firewall to keep the far right out of power. That now looks at risk. The future for Europe’s biggest economy, which has long been a bastion of stability and drearily predictable politics, suddenly looks less clear.  WHAT IS HAPPENING?  CDU leader Friedrich Merz currently looks most likely to become Germany’s leader after next month’s election. He decided to rely on the votes of AfD lawmakers to pass his anti-immigration motion in Germany’s parliament.  The vote itself was not binding but a proposal for dramatically limiting migration — a signature issue for the AfD and one that Merz has decided to embrace wholeheartedly amid growing voter concerns.  The motion passed on Wednesday, a historic moment and the first time AfD lawmakers had broken free of the firewall that had kept them isolated from mainstream parliamentary business.  While Merz’s Social Democrat opponent, current Chancellor Olaf Scholz, wasted no time attacking him, internal criticism within the CDU was muted at first.  Then Merkel blew up. “I consider it wrong to abandon this commitment and, as a result, to knowingly allow a majority with AfD votes in the Bundestag for the first time,” she said.  Her intervention is explosive because she’s been so reluctant to comment on contemporary political issues in her three years since stepping down as chancellor. The fact she’s chosen to speak out against her own party leader, just three weeks before the election, is dynamite.  HOW DID WE GET HERE?  The AfD lost ground in the first half of last year but since then has been on the rise in polls and now has about 21 percent of popular support across the country, up three points since November. In contrast, Merz’s conservative alliance (CDU/CSU) lost three points during that time, now standing at 30 percent in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls.  One key factor in the change in mood is a spate of shocking murders committed by immigrants, including an attack on a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg in December that left six people dead. On Jan. 22, an Afghan man allegedly attacked a group of pre-school children, killing two people including a two-year-old boy.  The stabbings in a park in the central city of Aschaffenburg provoked another outcry from the public and political leaders, with even Scholz notably hardening his rhetoric against attackers who came to Germany “seeking protection.” He said: “Misguided tolerance has no place here.”  Angela Merkel has exposed a deep rift within the country’s conservative movement. | Carlos Costa/AFP via Getty Images Merz went further, proposing strict border controls. “On the first day of my tenure as chancellor, I will instruct the interior ministry to impose permanent border controls with all our neighbors and refuse all attempts at illegal entry,” Merz said.  Then this week he pushed through his motion in the Bundestag, with the help of the AfD.  Trump-backing tech billionaire Elon Musk has thrown his weight behind the AfD, recently interviewing Weidel on his X social media platform. He has sparked outrage for saying Germany should move on from its guilt over its Nazi past. This week, he celebrated the parliamentary moves to tighten the country’s borders and Merz’s decision to use AfD support. WHAT IS AT STAKE?  Merz’s campaign for the chancellorship, for one thing. Until now, his CDU has had a solid lead, albeit one that is narrowing, over the AfD. The events of the last few days could change everything.  Will the CDU’s decision to work with the AfD make it easier for more voters to contemplate doing the same? Could Merz’s decision to champion an anti-migrant agenda backfire, merely legitimizing the AfD’s driving mission in the eyes of the electorate? Will voters choose to back the AfD on the basis that they would rather have the original than a paler imitation?  And then there’s Merkel’s intervention. She has been at odds with Merz since at least 2002, when she effectively shut him out of the CDU leadership. Since he returned in 2022, he has moved the party further to the right, undoing large parts of her legacy, especially on migration.  Will her reappearance — and the obvious disunity in the CDU — drive more voters into the arms of the AfD and its chancellor candidate, Alice Weidel? Or will more centrist voters ditch the CDU and back Scholz’s SPD or the Greens, who remain resolutely opposed to working with the AfD? WILL THE AFD TAKE POWER?  For now, it seems unlikely that the AfD will form part of any ruling coalition government, even if it surges further in voting on Feb. 23. There remains a clear majority of pro-EU and anti-far right parties in Germany that would not want to work with the AfD and it would take a monumental shift to change that.  But what happens in Germany inevitably has an impact elsewhere in Europe and beyond. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has already celebrated the AfD’s breakthrough in the migration vote, and other radical nationalists will be emboldened elsewhere.  Economically, the risk for Europe will be if this election ushers in a period of instability. The EU economy is already facing challenges in the form of U.S. President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade outlook, as well as competition from China.  WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?  On Friday, parliament voted on the so-called immigration “influx limitation law.” It would have been the first binding legislation to rely on far-right votes but, in a blow to Merz’s strategy and amid chaotic scenes, the attempt was rejected, adding another twist to a rollercoaster few days. All eyes will now be on the CDU’s party conference on Monday, where observers and journalists will gauge the mood among delegates regarding their support for Merz’s recent decisions as well as the level of unity among party members after two turbulent weeks.  Trump-backing tech billionaire Elon Musk has thrown his weight behind the AfD. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images Merz wants to make use of the conference to move away from focusing solely on the issue of migration (and thus the firewall debate) to concentrate on Germany’s economic woes, party officials told Berlin playbook. His aim is to present a 15-point plan for economic measures and devote 80 to 90 percent of his speech to the topic, they added. If the party conference is Merz’s first test, the following batch of opinion polls will be his second. The thinking among CDU officials was that getting tough on migration, while showing voters they are prepared to do things differently — even if that included relying on AfD support — would give them a boost. The conservatives had been stuck at around 30 percent since mid-December.  The polls over the coming days and weeks will show whether Merz’s gamble has worked.  Nette Nöstlinger reported from Berlin. Tim Ross reported from London.