CDU leadership meets in Berlin to plan a way out of its crisis

Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is meeting in Berlin to work out how to recover from three state election defeats in September. According to tagesschau, the party leadership begins a two-day retreat on Sunday amid doubts about Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the stability of the governing coalition and the party’s direction.

What happened

The CDU-Präsidium, the party’s top leadership body, will hold a Klausur (a closed-door strategy retreat) in Berlin over two days, tagesschau reports. The meeting follows a difficult month: three Landtagswahlen (elections to state parliaments) and three defeats.

The figures cited by tagesschau show how bad the losses were. In Sachsen-Anhalt (Saxony-Anhalt), where the CDU was once the strongest party, its vote fell by 19.9 points to just 17.2 per cent. Two weeks later in Berlin, the party came second with 18.8 per cent. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the CDU failed to win any seats in the Landtag (state parliament).

The party’s general secretary, Franziska Hoppermann, told the Augsburger Allgemeine that the retreat would not produce a “silver bullet” that makes all problems disappear overnight. She said it should be the determined start of a deep, long-term process, and that the party had to show it had understood the message of the election results.

Thorsten Frei, who leads the Unionsfraktion (the joint parliamentary group of the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU) in the Bundestag, told the ARD-Morgenmagazin that conditions for the party were as difficult as they had rarely been. He admitted that falling poll numbers made people in the party more nervous, but said the CDU should stick to its course.

Others want a change of emphasis. Mario Voigt, the CDU Ministerpräsident (state premier) of Thüringen (Thuringia), told the news agency dpa that the party should return to what voters elected it for at the federal election. He said heating, fuel and grocery shopping had all become too expensive, and that the CDU had to talk about how to make life affordable again. Hoppermann also said the party needed both bold long-term changes and noticeable short-term improvements in everyday life.

The criticism also reaches the chancellor. Stefan Evers, head of the Berlin CDU, recently said Merz bore a clear share of the blame for the defeats, according to tagesschau. Evers said Merz lacked empathy and approachability, and that moving away from election promises such as keeping the Schuldenbremse (the constitutional debt brake) had left voters disappointed. He told t-online that the reforms needed to create more confidence than fear of change.

Inside the coalition of the CDU/CSU and the Social Democrats (SPD), the reform programme itself is now disputed. Manuela Schwesig, the SPD state premier of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, has criticised the reforms as unfair in the eyes of the public.

Dennis Radtke, who leads the CDU’s social wing, told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that nobody apart from the far-right AfD could seriously want the coalition to collapse. He said he was dismayed by talk of a minority government and warned that the political centre was accelerating its own erosion.

Relations with the AfD are a further point of tension. On Tuesday, AfD politician Tobias Rausch was elected president of the Sachsen-Anhalt state parliament in a secret ballot. He received four more votes than the AfD and the BSW (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht) together hold seats, and there is speculation that the extra votes came from CDU members. The Linksfraktion (the Left Party group) requested an Aktuelle Stunde, a short topical debate, on the issue in the Bundestag.

Manfred Weber of the CSU, who chairs the European People’s Party group in the European Parliament, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that the “Brandmauer” (the “firewall”, meaning the mainstream parties’ refusal to cooperate with the AfD) in the sense of “them or us” must become history. He argued that the policy was a heavy burden in states such as Thüringen and Sachsen, where the CDU leads minority governments and regularly has to vote with left-wing parties.

Why it matters if you live in Germany

The CDU leads the federal government, so its internal debate shapes the policies that affect everyone living here. Party figures quoted by tagesschau are pushing for more attention to the cost of heating, fuel and food. If that view wins out, the cost of living could become a stronger focus of government policy.

The dispute over the coalition’s reforms also matters. With the SPD’s Schwesig calling them unfair and CDU voices asking for changes in tone, the pace and shape of planned reforms may come under pressure. tagesschau also links to an ARD-DeutschlandTrend survey from 1 October, which found that three quarters of Germans mainly feel burdened.

For international residents who follow German politics, the debate over the Brandmauer is a significant one. Whether the CDU keeps or softens its distance from the AfD will affect how coalitions are formed in the states and, possibly, at federal level. EU citizens can vote in local and European elections, so these questions also matter at the ballot box.

What to watch next

The key question is what the CDU-Präsidium agrees during its two-day retreat in Berlin, and whether Hoppermann’s promised long-term process comes with concrete measures on everyday costs. Watch also for signs of further strain in the coalition with the SPD, the response to Rausch’s election in Sachsen-Anhalt, and whether Weber’s call to soften the Brandmauer gains or loses support within the CDU and CSU.

Source: tagesschau