Germany: who to succeed Angela Merkel at the head of the CDU?

Text by: Pascal Thibaut Follow

Rarely has a local election had such consequences at the national level. The election in Thuringia of a region president thanks to the votes of the extreme right caused a political blast in Germany and reshuffled the cards for the succession of Angela Merkel on the right.

Publicity

From our correspondent in Berlin,

" A broken taboo ", " a broken dyke ": these words have been repeated many times by German politicians and media. Since the war, the president of an executive has never been elected thanks to the votes of the far right. In a country where the trauma of the Third Reich and Nazism remains omnipresent , such a vote constitutes a caesura and an earthquake.

In Thuringia, a region of the former communist GDR, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, as everywhere in the east of the country, scores very high (between 20 and 25%). With a proportional voting system, the formation of a stable coalition therefore becomes very complicated. The one who managed the region associating three left parties - Die Linke, the Greens and the Social Democrats of the SPD - lost its absolute majority during the regional elections at the end of October. Outgoing Minister-President Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke) wanted to remain in power at the head of the same coalition, with a relative majority. But surprise: on the third ballot, he was beaten. The AfD, which maintained its candidate, gave him no vote and voted as a block for a Liberal elected FDP, whose party had narrowly collected in the fall the 5% needed to be represented in Parliament. With the support of Christian Democrat deputies, who had no candidate, Thomas Kemmerich was elected by relative majority . It was immediately clear when the results were announced that his election could only have been possible with the votes of the far right. When the president of the regional parliament asks him if he accepts the vote, he accepts and is immediately declared elected. Symbolically, the president of the Die Linke parliamentary group, who had prepared a bouquet of flowers for her candidate, throws them at the feet of the new regional boss, without shaking his hand or addressing him to congratulate him as the custom dictates. Politics.

A taboo is broken. Thomas Kemmerich immediately becomes a plague victim, the man who was elected by the far right. And not just any, the one led by Thjuring Bjorn Höcke, the leader of the most radical wing of the AfD , the one who for example spoke of the " memorial of shame " to evoke the monument which in Berlin reminds the Holocaust against the Jews of Europe.

The political party headquarters in Berlin are immediately on alert. A previously unthinkable red line has been crossed. The condemnations are raining. Protesters protest outside the Liberal Party headquarters. Its leader goes to Thuringia the following day and obtains that his newly elected colleague resigns .

The image of the FDP is scratched. He is penalized in the polls and must fear this Sunday during another regional election, in Hamburg this time, of not being represented in the Parliament. But it is within the Christian Democratic Union, the CDU, that the storm is strongest.

The shaky authority of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, (AKK, the acronym of the president of the CDU) immediately goes to Thuringia to impose the party line: no alliance or cooperation with the AfD as with Die Linke, movement heir to the old party East German Communist. AKK fails to impose the decision adopted in Berlin, namely the organization of new elections in Thuringia, so that voters can once again resolve a situation that has become explosive. This incapacity of the president of a large conservative party, used to the fact that the will of her leadership is not questioned, comes to shake a little more the authority of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. The new CDU president, runner-up to Angela Merkel, was narrowly elected in December 2018 against a candidate, Friedrich Merz, more conservative , who wants to break with the legacy of the Chancellor, whether immigration or economic and social policy. AKK has since endeavored to reconcile the two camps within the party, without really succeeding.

She made mistakes, especially in her communication, questioning her maturity for a national career. After having declared mordicus that she would devote herself 100% to the presidency of the CDU, she had finally joined the government last summer to become Minister of Defense to replace Ursula von der Leyen, candidate for the presidency of the European Commission. This flip-flop had also scratched AKK's credibility. The unusual separation between the post of chancellor and the party chairman has proven problematic. Difficult to impose itself in the shadow of Angela Merkel, especially when irritations appear between the two women, yet very close, and that the former president of the party for 18 years weakens her runner-up by her statements. Angela Merkel had mentioned, from South Africa, the situation in Thuringia with a firm condemnation which contrasted with the inability of AKK to impose its line in this small region.

Managing this crisis was the last straw. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer caused surprise a few days later by announcing that she was giving up a candidacy for the Chancellery , a role that traditionally falls to the president of the CDU. This decision again causes a political earthquake, because it shuffles the cards to the right. The Christian Democratic Party is now going through turbulence similar to that which agitated its partner last year in the grand coalition governing Germany, the Social Democratic Party. Ironically, the SPD appears, although very weak, as a pole of stability in the face of a CDU without a candidate and a suspended president.

► Read also: Germany: which successor for Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer at the head of the CDU?

A two-stage rocket

The schedule desired by AKK no longer holds water. Clarifying things at the CDU at the next congress in December does not seem tenable. The calendar will accelerate and we could see more clearly this Monday. Four contenders are in the ranks. But three of them, who had talks with AKK this week, did not curiously declare themselves openly. These four people are all men, from the same region, North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany. The one who runs it, Armin Laschet, is the spiritual heir to Angela Merkel by defending a policy at the center. Its competitors are positioning themselves on a more conservative line, starting with the favorite of CDU sympathizers according to a poll, the opponent defeated AKK in December 2018. Friedrich Merz wants to break with the Merkel era of which he criticizes a line too left which would have favored the development of the far right. He also has an account to settle with the chancellor who had sidelined him in 2002 when Angela Merkel was yet to impose herself as leader of the opposition against the left government of the time. The dashing Minister of Health Jens Spahn who is not forty years old has improved his image by effectively concentrating on the files of his ministry and by being less perceived as a career worker with long teeth. The fourth contender surprised everyone at the start of the week. Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, appears to be an outsider. Long perceived as a rising star of the CDU, his career in the highest spheres was interrupted in 2012 after an electoral failure in North Rhine-Westphalia which had led to his dismissal from the government by Angela Merkel. He too can be seen as a victim of the Chancellor.

This imbroglio is all the more complicated since the succession to be organized resembles a two-stage rocket. AKK will also be replaced in the long term as president of the CDU, a process which in itself does not already seem easy to organize. But the nomination of the candidate who will lead the party during the 2021 electoral campaign is an even more complex affair, because the CDU cannot decide it alone. Indeed, two conservative parties coexist in Germany and they always have a common candidate for the chancellery on which it is therefore necessary to agree. The CDU is a national party present everywhere in Germany, except in Bavaria. In this region marked by a strong identity, a sister party, the Christian Social Union or CSU, is in business. Twice, in 1976 and in 2002, the candidate of the German right was a Bavarian. The current CSU leader Markus Söder seems to want to devote himself to the management of his region. However, he does not intend to have the CDU's nomination process imposed on him. And the political positioning of the latter is not trivial for the Bavarian CSU, which does not want a person rejecting the Merkel era and too much to the right.

Netflix has not yet announced the shooting of a series on the future of the German right, but the scenario would not fail to spice up. After the end of the Merkel era, which will remain in power for 16 years if it remains in office as it wishes until the autumn of 2021, German political cards could be redistributed. The complex succession at the head of the CDU is only one aspect of this historic break in which moving tectonic plates could cause a political earthquake in Germany.

Newsletter With the Daily Newsletter, find the headlines directly in your mailbox

Download the app

• Germany
• Angela Merkel

On the same subject

Mid-day guest

Attack in Hanau: "The surveillance net is now much more complicated to extend in Germany"

Germany: nine people killed in shootings near Frankfurt

Germany creates minimum old age for the poorest