Before parliamentary elections: CDU wants to promote East Germany more

Before the state elections in three East German states, the CDU wants to more closely align the living conditions in East Germany 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall with the West and thus oppose the further strengthening of protest parties. The alignment process has stagnated for over twelve years, according to a draft for a corresponding paper, which is to pass the CDU leadership on Monday in Berlin. The draft is available to the news agency dpa.

Among other things, the Christian Democrats demand that at least two of the model regions for the 5G mobile radio standard provided for in the coalition agreement should be located in East Germany.

The CDU wants to set a signal against the right-wing populists of the AfD and the Left Party before the European elections in May and the three difficult state elections in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia in September and October. In the elections, the CDU wants to prevent the AFD from becoming the strongest force and from achieving a government without the Left Party and AfD. A cooperation with the AfD has formally excluded the federal CDU.

Indirect criticism of Merkel?

The paper for the meetings of CDU presidium and board on Monday can be understood in part as criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel. She has been in charge of the government for a good 13 years, so Merkel is responsible for the country's development. Until the change to new chairman Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer in December Merkel was also for 18 years CDU chief.

Many East regions have to fight with emigration and aging, in the wage structure and pensions exist differences, according to the paper prepared under the leadership of the CDU head of the CDU Mike Mohring and the Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer. The citizens of the new countries are predominantly winners of the unit. Behind them lay "a difficult, often personal sacrifices, but above all admirable transformation and development process". Nevertheless, "40 years of division and socialism are an experience that can not be brushed off".

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Michael Kretschmer

The paper entitled "What German Unity Today Tells: Unity and Cohesion through Equivalent Living Conditions Throughout Germany" states that differences in the political culture of the country are obvious. Thus, about 40 percent of the citizens with the left and the AfD voted wing and protest parties, "whose political achievements are to a large extent fed by skepticism about the free democratic basic order and social market economy and the mistrust of the security promise of the state".

Special attention is paid to the interests of families with children and the elderly, according to the 21 points in the paper. For example, the CDU is calling for investment in kindergartens and schools close to the home, the provision of medical and nursing services, needs-based public transport, and better connection of the center centers in the east to long-distance rail transport.