Merz rules out cooperation with AfD, Berlin cuts funding for parks by a third, ‘Das Crazy’ voted German Youth Word of the Year and more news on Monday, October 20th.
Monday’s top story: Merz rules out cooperation with Alternative for Germany (AfD) again
Speaking at a party event in Sauerland on Saturday, Christian Democrat (CDU) leader Chancellor Friedrich Merz again ruled out any possibility of working with the far-right AfD party in the foreseeable future.
“There will be no cooperation with the AfD, at least not under me as party leader of the CDU Germany,” Merz said.
Other leading CDU politicians also supported Merz on the issue of maintaining the so-called firewall with the AfD.
The CDU stands “for decency in political dealings and against hatred and incitement.” The AfD “does not stand for that”, Bundestag parliamentary group leader Jens Spahn (CDU) told Bild am Sonntag.
Some politicians have been calling for the CDU to loosen its 2018 resolution, which rules out any cooperation with the far-right party, in view of polls showing that the AfD could have a clear win in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
The polls indicate that the party could also perform well in other states.
READ ALSO: How Germany’s leaders are empowering the far right
New study shows bias against foreign suspects in German media
A 2025 analysis by journalism professor Thomas Hestermann for Mediendienst Integration reveals a stark overrepresentation of foreign suspects in German media coverage of violent crime.
The study found that in television reports where the origin of suspects is mentioned, 94.6 percent involve foreigners, despite official police statistics showing that foreigners were suspects in only 34.3 percent of violent crimes.
In print media, one-third of violent crime reports name the origins of the suspect or suspects, with 90.8 percent referring to non-German suspects.
READ ALSO: How German media reveals its bias when foreigners commit crimes
Notably, suspects from predominantly Muslim countries constitute over 70 percent of foreign suspects mentioned in media reports, while police data shows only 15.8 percent.
The analysis was based on coverage in major German TV stations such as ARD, ZDF, and RTL, along with leading newspapers like Bild and Süddeutsche Zeitung, during selected weeks in early 2025.
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The report appears to underline long-standing concerns about media bias in crime reporting related to ethnicity and nationality in Germany.
Berlin cuts funding for parks and urban greening by a third
Berlin’s CDU-SPD governing coalition has sharply reduced funding for Grün Berlin GmbH, the state-owned company managing major parks and climate-related urban projects.
The Senate decided to cut five million euros per year from Grün Berlin’s budget for at least the next two years – nearly one-third of its planned investment budget.
Gleisdreieck park is one of many parks and open spaces managed by state-owned Grün Berlin in the German capital. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Britta Pedersen
Grün Berlin manages projects such as Britzer Garten, Tempelhofer Feld, Gärten der Welt, and the Park am Gleisdreieck. It also leads plans to create a climate-resilient public space between the TV Tower at Alexanderplatz and the Spree River.
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The initiative Offene Mitte Berlin, which advocates for the redevelopment of central open spaces, denounced the decision as showing “a clear disinterest in climate adaptation.”
It called the move irresponsible, pointing out that allocations for climate projects had already been reduced by €10 million annually in 2024.
New Deutsche Bahn CEO wants to ‘do everything differently’
Deutsche Bahn’s new CEO, Evelyn Palla, wants to completely restructure the transport company, making dirty trains and dingy train stations a thing of the past.
“I’m committed to a completely new beginning. To do this, we have to do everything differently to before,” she told Bild am Sonntag.
She announced that she would be reviewing “every job for its added value” for customers, adding that management must serve the railway workers. This means that, in future, many decisions will be made by local on-site employees rather than at the company headquarters in Berlin.
“My goal is to create less bureaucracy at Deutsche Bahn and significantly more space for people who make things happen. In the future, decisions will be made where the responsibility lies, not three floors above.”
READ ALSO: Deutsche Bahn’s problems are too big for a new boss to fix
‘Das crazy’ is German Youth Word of the Year for 2025
Das crazy was announced as the Youth Word of the Year for 2025 at the Frankfurt Book Fair on Saturday.
It narrowly beat the runner-up terms goonen (the German equivalent of the English slang term ‘gooning’, or masturbating for extended periods) and checkst du? (‘do you get it?’) to first place.
A more popular way of saying das ist verrückt (that’s crazy) among young people, the German-English mish-mash was born out of internet and meme culture. If you’re thinking it sounds grammatically wrong, you’d be right: the ‘correct’ way of saying it would be das ist crazy, using a verb after the article.
READ ALSO: How well do you know these German teen slang expressions?
This year’s choice once again demonstrated the enduring influence of the English language and the trend towards brevity, said Nikolas Hoenig, head of marketing at PONS Langenscheidt, the publishing house which has been selecting the Youth Word of the Year since 2008.
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This year, some two million 11 to 20-year-olds took part in the anonymous online vote for 2025’s choice with words such as Digga(h), Lowkey, Rede, Schere, Sybau, tot and tuff also in the running.
With reporting by AFP and DPA.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: thelocal.de
