Friedrich Merz, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Jens Spahn: The three most promising candidates for the CDU party chairmanship were guests at the Federal Executive of the Union for SMEs and Trade. Which then spoke out for Merz as a favorite: "By a large majority, the MIT Federal Council supports Friedrich Merz as the new chairman of the CDU Germany".
The candidates had previously presented themselves to the Federal Board in Berlin in front of 70 MIT members. At the center of the 90-minute discussion and the per-minute ideas of the candidates, economic policy topics as well as questions surrounding immigration and integration policies were the main topics.
The MIT, which claims to have about 25,000 members, was satisfied that all three candidates for the CDU chairmanship supported important demands of the associations such as tax reforms.
So far, of the associations next to the MIT only the women's union had clearly put behind a candidate. However, she supports Kramp-Karrenbauer. At the beginning of December, the CDU wants to elect a successor to the CDU leader, Angela Merkel, who is leaving after 18 years at the federal party convention in Hamburg.
Most recently, Merz had received criticism for claiming to be "part of the upper middle class," despite a seven-digit annual salary. Merz said in Bild am Sonntag: "For me, the social center is not a purely economic entity: I have received from my parents the values that characterize the middle class: diligence, discipline, decency, respect and the knowledge, that you give something back to society if you can afford it. "
Wrong self-assessmentWhy Merz does not belong to the middle class
Merz continued, "When I hear 'upper class' or 'upper class', I think of people who have inherited a lot of money or a company and enjoy their lives with them, which is not the case for me."