Germany: the right under pressure to determine the successor of Angela Merkel
Markus Söder, the president of the CSU, and Armin Laschet, the president of the CDU.
© John MacDougall / Pool via AP - Marcel Kusch / DPA via AP - Editing RFI
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
Who to succeed Angela Merkel?
With less than six months before the elections, the German parties are getting under way.
But, on the right, the uncertainty remains.
The Conservatives have yet to decide who will be their candidate in the race for the chancellery.
The two presidents of the right-wing parties, the CDU and the CSU, are in the running.
The pressure is mounting for the issue to be resolved.
The parliamentary groups of the two parties met on Sunday April 11 in conclave with the outgoing Angela Merkel and the two potential candidates.
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With our correspondent in Berlin,
Pascal Thibault
"
Die K-Frage
" - "
The K question
" (as "chancellor",
Kanzler
in German) - agitates the political world and especially the Christian Democrats in Germany.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) nominated its candidate last summer in the person of Finance Minister Olaf Scholz.
The Greens will announce their choice in a week.
Suspense and uncertainty remain with the Conservatives.
Angela Merkel will step down from power in the fall
, after 16 years in the chancellery.
Voters do not yet know who wants to succeed him on the right, and for what.
And the Christian Democrats face a bad wind, with losses of ten points in the polls in a few weeks, severe failures in the regional March and scandals of financial embezzlement.
Two undeclared candidates are in the running.
The new president of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Armin Laschet, traditionally has the hand, but he does not convince in the polls and has been criticized for his anti-Covid-19 policies.
Markus Söder, the chairman of the sister party, the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU), is much more popular.
The two parties must agree on their candidacy.
Two Bavarians have been candidates in the past and have lost.
But history does not necessarily repeat itself.
► To read also: Germany-succession of Angela Merkel: the race is accelerating
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