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It didn't go bad for Norbert Röttgen.
The year 2020 did not see him at the forefront of Corona managers.
But the foreign politician received a lot of attention after his application for the CDU chairmanship.
The US election and the international conflicts helped him there.
In the meantime, the outsider candidate will be given a chance not to end up in last place in the January 16 election.
It also has to do with a strategy that others have now copied.
WORLD:
Mr. Röttgen, make a prognosis, how will 2020 go down in history?
As a year that demanded a lot from us, or as one that taught us more?
Norbert Röttgen:
Above all, it will be remembered as a demanding year, as an ongoing but necessary imposition on the freedom and self-determination of the individual.
Of course, the pandemic has also brought lessons and insights.
The forced change in behavior results in de-ritualization and deceleration.
But that won't shape the memory.
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WORLD:
What do you mean by de-ritualization?
Röttgen:
I am speaking here from my own experience.
Being a politician often means being rushed.
Political activity is shaped by rituals, which are by no means all necessary or useful.
That certainly applies to many professions.
The daily abusive access to the scarce resource time has been made clear to many people by the omission of such rituals and routines.
WORLD:
The SPD politician Karl Lauterbach predicts that the experiences of 2020 do not bode well for the fight against climate change.
Are you pessimistic as well?
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Röttgen:
Yes and no.
There is a positive and a negative side.
The negative conclusion from the pandemic is that it is apparently very difficult for us to adjust to a new reality of life, even in the face of a danger that immediately demands its victims.
With a view to the climate crisis, which is taking place much, much more slowly, this may mean that there is and will be even less willingness to rethink and change behavior.
The positive moment is that through their determined, rational and honest behavior in the first wave of the pandemic, politics has achieved an enormous gain in confidence among many people.
Instead of glossing over the situation, scientific expertise was consulted in this phase of ignorance.
The criteria of rational suitability applied - and not what was politically opportune.
Citizens have seen an active state that is able to protect them.
Crisis management has benefited from this to this day.
We must also apply this pattern of behavior to climate policy.
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WORLD:
Does that still echo?
Because the past few weeks actually show the opposite, an erratic steering of politics into a second lockdown.
Röttgen:
Yes, politicians are still benefiting from their appearance at the beginning of the crisis.
That brought back a profound trust that resonates.
However, there is no guarantee that it will stay that way.
WORLD:
Whether trust remains depends on the success of the mass vaccination.
Some people are already saying that vaccinated people should not receive special rights.
Why special rights?
Doesn't that mean anything more than a return to normal life?
Röttgen:
It's not about special rights.
It's about justifying restrictions.
If you call this special rights, then it shows that something has slipped in thinking;
that one regards the situation of restriction as the normal case and the situation that the citizen is free as the special status.
I think the question of how vaccinated people can live is wrongly debated morally.
I think it's more important to talk about it from a pragmatic point of view.
There are some practical difficulties here.
You can't tell if you have been vaccinated.
Should everyone have a vaccination card with them?
And then there would have to be controls.
What does being vaccinated mean for one's behavior, and how does it affect the behavior of a society, some of which has not yet been vaccinated?
Of course you have to draw conclusions from this when someone can no longer endanger others.
When the practical questions have been resolved and there is no longer any objective reason for the restrictions, then they must be lifted.
WORLD:
We currently have far too few vaccines.
That was foreseeable.
Don't you wonder why there wasn't talk of expanding production capacity before?
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Röttgen:
One of the lessons of the year is that, despite the experiences of the first wave, we were and are always too late.
We have to evaluate this self-critically, at this point we have to change, also with a view to other crises.
Otherwise we will immediately gamble away people's newly won trust.
WORLD:
The first person vaccinated was 101 years old.
What was your first thought?
Röttgen:
I was touched and proud that the behavior of the state did not express a bit of usefulness, but the appreciation of a very long life of a person.
It was a great symbol of the civilization of this society.
101-year-old from Saxony-Anhalt was the first to receive the corona vaccination in Germany
In Halberstadt in Saxony-Anhalt, the vaccinations started one day before the official start.
In a senior citizen center, 101-year-old Edith Kwoizalla and around 40 other residents after her were vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Source: WELT / Lea Freist
WORLD:
Is it really ethical to prioritize young people at the very bottom?
Isn't there a need for a kind of generational balance?
Röttgen:
Personally, I think it's right to put the criterion of endangering life and thus the individual need for protection first.
In general, it is a matter of weighing up values that cannot be answered in a technical-executive manner.
That is why I would have liked a legislative decision on the basic lines in the Bundestag without any parliamentary group obligation.
That would have been a democratic win.
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WORLD:
You ran as a candidate for the chairmanship to bring the youth closer to the CDU.
As?
Röttgen:
We have to become more political.
Young people have a good sense of the moral responsibility dimension of decisions, so we have to pick them up.
You can see that when young people talk about the climate.
The big questions of our time must be at the center of the party.
WORLD:
Friedrich Merz has the sympathy of many in the Junge Union (JU).
So isn't he the young people's candidate?
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Röttgen:
I myself have a lot of ties to a product of the Junge Union and the JU.
But the JU is a political association.
She is not
the
young generation.
When I speak of young people, I actually mean a whole generation of young people that the CDU has to look at again.
I am talking about young voters and those who will be very soon.
In order to enter into a dialogue with them, one thing is absolutely clear: we have to prove our future competence, and there is a defining topic, and that is climate change.
WORLD:
You supported the proposals for a quota for women in the party.
Armin Laschet gave little insight into this;
Merz has expressed considerable doubts about this, but has not made any alternative proposal that he had promised.
Are the fellow campaigners getting slender feet?
Röttgen:
I don't want to rate that.
In my opinion, we have to be clear as a party here, and that is why I am.
I consider the equal participation of women and men at all levels of the party to be the CDU's most important modernization task.
As a party, we will fall out of time if we don't get this representation.
We are giving up so much potential.
In ten years you will look back and be amazed that it was in question for so long.
WORLD:
Would you also propose Jens Spahn as CDU deputy?
Otherwise it would be conceivable that the top Corona manager might even lose his post in the party presidium.
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Röttgen:
If I become chairman, Jens Spahn will continue to be a central figure in the party and in the government.
He will most certainly be a member of the party's next presidium.
WORLD:
In the meantime, Laschet also indicates that he could imagine CSU boss Markus Söder as the Union's candidate for chancellor.
And even Merz says that nobody has access rights.
Are your colleagues copying your strategy of being satisfied with the CDU chairmanship and thus luring those who want Söder at the party congress?
Röttgen:
I have noticed that even nine months after I first spoke out on this question, I still have no need to change my mind.
It is in the self-image of the chairman of the CDU that he trusts himself to be the Federal Chancellor.
At the same time, I have always said that, together with the CSU, it is about the best line-up for the Bundestag election next year.
I find it relaxing that I don't have to revise or even define such statements shortly before the door closes.
WORLD:
Can a CDU chairman remain in office who insists on becoming a candidate for chancellor but cannot assert himself against the CSU?
A CDU chairman who thinks he is the right candidate for chancellor without any ifs or buts and who is then informed by his party a little later that he is not wanted as a candidate for chancellor would have forfeited his authority.
WORLD:
The Chancellor has also declared overcoming the Corona crisis to be a kind of system conflict.
That happened with a view to China.
The antagonist, the US, is failing to cope with the crisis.
Did China Win?
Röttgen:
I would not admit that coping with the pandemic is an example of the systemic conflict.
This is exactly what China has been trying to make us believe since the beginning of the pandemic: its supposed systemic superiority, especially over the West.
We should remember where, for all we know, the pandemic started.
Perhaps the pandemic would not have existed if it had not broken out in China but in a democratic and open state.
Instead of dealing transparently with the known information, the existence of the virus was covered up for weeks.
The World Health Organization (WHO) was influenced and politics was later made with masks.
We should not go into the attempt to turn the pandemic into a geopolitical conflict.
Our task is to protect people as best as possible from illness and death.
That is what we should focus on.
WORLD:
Isn't the great age of China already here?
Röttgen:
I don't think we're just seeing the beginning of a Chinese era.
We are seeing tremendous economic development in China, tremendous success in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
We see tremendous technological progress.
And at the same time, China under Xi has achieved enormous levels of repression using modern surveillance technology.
Power is monopolized in a way that has not been the case since the time of Mao.
The country's claim to foreign policy power adheres to neither moral nor international law principles.
This means that China is not established as the dominant state, but as the greatest challenger to the international order in the 21st century.