BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s conservative chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz on Wednesday drew a chorus of criticism, including from his likely future coalition partner, for a raft of parliamentary questions that some see as an attack on German civil society.
The 31-page filing, signed by Merz in his capacity as parliamentary leader of the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), asked the outgoing Social Democrat-led (SPD) government 551 questions on whether civil society groups which had received government funding were politically neutral.
Merz, seen as gaffe-prone even by some members of his own party, had already alarmed other parties by…