Germany’s center-right CDU said Monday it would choose a new leader at a special congress on April 25, as the crisis-racked party hopes to halt a slide in the polls and end speculation about who could succeed veteran Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union has been in turmoil after her heir apparent, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, resigned as party leader this month over her supposed failure to stop regional Members of Parliament (MPs) from cooperating with the far right.
Speaking after talks with party grandees in Berlin, Kramp-Karrenbauer said they had agreed to hold an extraordinary congress to elect the next leader of the CDU, a party that has dominated politics in Germany for 70 years.
The winner is then also expected to be the CDU’s candidate for the chancellery in a general election set for 2021, when Merkel plans to bow out after her fourth term at the helm of Europe’s top economy.
Kramp-Karrenbauer, widely known as “AKK,” told reporters the leadership vote would send “a very clear signal.”
For the first time, AKK also named the four party members expected to throw their hat in the ring, confirming widespread media speculation.
They include Merkel’s longtime rival Friedrich Merz, popular with the CDU’s more conservative factions, and the centrist state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia Armin Laschet.
Merz, who narrowly lost to Kramp-Karrenbauer in 2018’s party leadership vote, is expected to announce his bid for the CDU’s top post at a press conference on Tuesday.
Monday’s top-level talks in Berlin came a day after the CDU suffered its second-worst result ever in a regional election, coming third in Hamburg with just 11.5 percent of the vote.
The party is also engulfed in an internal debate as to how it should position itself against the extremes of right and left that have reshaped Germany’s political landscape.
The choice of leader will set the tone for the future of the party as polls highlight the urgent need for action, with only 27 percent saying they would back the CDU, ahead of 23 percent for the Greens and 14 percent for the far right.
Supporters of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) celebrate after exit poll results were announced on public broadcaster TV ZDF during the election for a new parliament in German city-state Hamburg on Sunday in Hamburg. Photo: AFP
