What to do with a party that has been trying in vain for almost three years to give itself a stable leadership and has thus failed twice?

The task that Armin Laschet has in front of him, the current CDU chairman, is extremely large.

He should prevent it from failing a third time.

Otherwise, the CDU would not only have to press the opposition benches in the federal government, but could also plunge into political insignificance in the long term.

Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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With the most recent decisions, Laschet has at least calmed the excited party down for the first time: A conference of CDU district chairmen will meet on October 30th, and the board and presidium will be completely re-elected at the next party congress.

Above all, Laschet gained time in this way.

He urgently needs them.

The horror scenario for the question of Laschet's successor is now another battle vote between several candidates - and a runoff, which one applicant then wins with a very tight result.

That was the case with the election of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer in 2018 and with the election of Laschet in 2020 - both times Friedrich Merz lost wafer-thin.

That led to "trenches and injuries", says the deputy CDU chairman Silvia Breher, and should not repeat itself. It could not be that the party had to choose between “three, four, five - or however many - applicants”, rather it needed a “holistic approach”, said the 48-year-old politician from Lower Saxony to the news portal t-online . The view is widespread in the CDU.

But the wish to prevent the candidates from being shown again has so far been opposed by the will of five CDU politicians who could apply for the office of chairman.

Admittedly, no one has officially declared his candidacy so far.

But everyone assumes they are thinking about it.

These are Health Minister Jens Spahn, the economic politician Friedrich Merz, the head of the SME Association Carsten Linnemann, the parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag Ralph Brinkhaus and the foreign politician Norbert Röttgen.

They all come from North Rhine-Westphalia and are all Catholic.

In addition to Merz, Spahn and Röttgen have already run for chairmanship.

A team is longed for

Laschet is currently holding talks with the aim of reducing the number of applicants. In the CDU, it is desirable that a chairman be elected with at least a two-thirds result. A team in which there would be only one candidate for the chairmanship is longed for as a particularly salutary solution.

But the matter is complicated, also because the possible candidates are not mutually green. Some believe of Friedrich Merz that his ambitions could not be quite as serious. The 65-year-old former parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag would, if he became party leader, approach 70 in the next federal election. He could forego in favor of Linnemann, who also stands for the economic wing of the CDU. Röttgen is only 56, but has the disadvantage that he has not suffered well in his North Rhine-Westphalian state association. Brinkhaus, 53 years old, has not been very popular with Merkel supporters since he pushed Volker Kauder out of the position of parliamentary group chairman. But even among those who voted for him three years ago, there are many who are disappointed because, in their eyes, he did not set the tonewhich the self-confidence of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group would have needed after Merkel's long years.

There remains Spahn and Linnemann.

They represent a new generation in the CDU - Spahn is 41, Linnemann 44. And they are the only ones of the five who appreciate each other.

The probability that they would compete against each other is therefore considered to be low.

Some hope that Spahn could agree with Linnemann - and the economic wing - that both compete in a team, Linnemann then, for example, would become Secretary General.