Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU and candidate for Chancellor of Germany does not hesitate to goes against even the legacy left by Angela Merkel as he steps up his fight against the far right ahead of the election.

At a campaign rally in the northern German city of Flensburg, Merz presented himself as the antithesis of Angela Merkel mainly in immigration issue.

“We can’t do this!” Mertz told the crowd earlier this week, playing on Merkel’s famous 2015 mantra when she said during an unprecedented influx of refugees “We can do this!” At the time, Merkel’s statement symbolized Germany’s proverbial “welcoming culture” toward immigrants, manifested in its willingness to accept several hundred thousand asylum seekers.

However, Mertz’s motivation for distancing himself so firmly from Merkel’s legacy is now clear. Ahead of national elections scheduled for February 23, Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is in a tough fight to to stem the momentum of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The AfD is in second place in the polls with 21%, rising steadily in recent weeks, but still far behind the conservatives in first place with Mertz, who are on 30%.

During the campaign, the AfD sent a consistent message: Merz and Merkel are cut from the same cloth. At the AfD conference earlier this month, for example, Alice Weidel, the party’s chancellor candidate, devoted much of her speech to equating Merz with Merkel and portraying the CDU as essentially a leftist party that left immigration and crime to be rampant in Germany.

“We know the CDU, dear Mrs. Merkel, and we also know you, dear Mr. Merz,” Weidel said. He then urged Germans to choose the AfD, or as he put it: “Vote for the original.”

Mertz has pulled the CDU much further to the right since taking over the leadership of the party in 2022, not only on immigration but also on energy and the economy. While Mertz has long opposed Merkel’s more centrist approach, until now he has rarely been so opposed to the former chancellor’s ideology.

During his speech, Merz argued that Germany receives far more immigrants than it can integrate. The country, he said, cannot take in millions of asylum seekers and provide them with schools, health care and housing, “no matter how hard we try.”

“I promise you that,” he added. “Under my leadership, numbers will be drastically reduced, because we are serious about curbing illegal immigration in Germany.”

Merz’s conservatives ruled out a coalition with the AfD after the election, maintaining a firewall around the far-right party. Given this stance, the conservatives’ most likely coalition partners are the center-left Greens and the Social Democratic Party.

“The CDU has surrendered itself unconditionally to a left-green ideology,” Weidel said during her conference speech, calling the CDU a “party of betrayal.”

Mertz is at a political crossroads as he tries to get even tougher on immigration while trying to distance his party from the AfD.

“We don’t think the same as them,” he said of the AfD in Flensburg. “It is not the alternative for Germany. It is the downfall of Germany.”