Former Union parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz will run for the CDU chairmanship.
The German press agency learned this on Saturday from party circles.
This is the third time that the economic expert has attempted the office of chairman after Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is now only managing director, announced her withdrawal from party chairmanship in 2018.
As the "Bild" newspaper had first reported, the CDU district executive Hochsauerland was invited to nominate Merz as a candidate for chairman this Monday evening.
On Friday, the foreign politician Norbert Röttgen and the executive head of the Chancellery, Helge Braun, announced their candidacies for the CDU chairmanship. Union parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus, who was also considered a possible candidate to succeed the CDU chairman Armin Laschet, who had failed as candidate for chancellor in the Bundestag election, declined to run after a report by the "Neue Westfälische". During a meeting of his Gütersloh district association on Friday evening, Brinkhaus did not ask for a proposal from his home association. "Ralph Brinkhaus was involved in the meeting and after careful consideration he did not throw his hat into the ring," said district association chief Raphael Tigges of the newspaper.
Braun, on the other hand, said on Saturday morning on Deutschlandfunk that he wanted to swear the party on a clear middle course if he was elected.
The CDU must very soon be able to get "encouragement from the entire breadth of society" again.
“To do this, the CDU has to be clearly in the middle,” he added, pointing out that the Union lost primarily to the SPD and the Greens in the federal elections.
After the defeat in the Bundestag election, the CDU will for the first time carry out a member survey on December 17th, asking who should become the new party leader.
The application phase runs until November 17th.
After polling the grassroots, the CDU wants to elect the new party leadership at a federal party conference in January.