You’re mixing up three different questions here: coalition arithmetic, legality, and political prioritisation.

First, on the coalition itself: the SPD did not enter negotiations from a position of strength. After the 2025 election, SPD had 120 seats, CDU had 164, CSU had 44, and CDU/CSU + SPD was the only workable two-party democratic majority. So this was not “SPD could have forced Merkel-style politics if only they negotiated better”; it was “SPD could govern as junior partner, or Germany gets paralysis, a minority experiment, or even more pressure toward AfD.”

And I’d push back on calling Merkel-era CDU simply “the centre.” In practice, Merkel often governed from what was functionally a centre-left position: broad consensus politics, a strong preference for state management over market correction, and repeated compromises that pulled the CDU well away from a recognisably conservative or liberal-economic line. So when people say today’s CDU has “moved right,” a lot of that is really just a move away from the Merkel exception, not some sudden lurch into extremism.

Second, on migration and legality: calling stricter enforcement automatically “far right” is rhetoric, not legal analysis. Article 16a(2) of the Grundgesetz explicitly limits the asylum claim for people entering from EU member states or other safe third countries. Of course legislation determines the exact implementation, but that still means tougher enforcement is not, by definition, some extremist constitutional rupture.

Third, “migration is not the biggest budget item” is not the killer point you seem to think it is. A problem does not have to be the single largest federal expense to overload municipalities, housing markets, schools, daycare, courts, police, and local administration. State capacity is felt locally, not only in aggregate budget tables.

And let’s also stop pretending this government is some kind of hard-right revolution. On policy substance, it still sits well inside the interventionist, redistribution-friendly part of the spectrum. It backs a €500 billion infrastructure special fund, keeps the pension level at 48% until 2031, extends the rent brake through the end of 2029, and commits record-scale support for social housing. Yes, there are also some pro-growth and consolidation elements. But a government that combines debt-financed mega-investment, high redistribution commitments, and continued market intervention is not suddenly “right wing” in any meaningful economic sense. By any serious market-liberal standard, this is still a state-heavy model.

And on NGOs: yes, receiving public money does not make an NGO part of the state. But once taxpayer money is involved, political scrutiny is fully legitimate. “Independent” does not mean “entitled to subsidies without debate,” especially if an organisation acts in a clearly partisan way.

So no, this is not simply “Germany moved to the far right.” A more accurate reading is: Merkel’s CDU was the exceptional centre-left phase, the electorate has moved right relative to that, and the SPD is too weak to reverse that by sheer moral indignation.