CSU boss Markus Söder has withdrawn from the debate about the Union chancellor candidate in 2025.

There are now "such great people" in the CDU with the re-elected prime ministers Daniel Günther (Schleswig-Holstein) or Hendrik Wüst (NRW), he said on Sunday in the ARD summer interview.

"The CSU is out of the question anyway," he added.

"It was like that in history, it has never worked out for a Bavarian, you have to honestly say that," he said, also looking at his defeat in the race for the Union Chancellor candidacy in 2021. Work with CDU leader Friedrich Merz he "great" together.

He is a very good opposition leader in Berlin and has his full support.

"He is the head of the CDU, he is the head of the opposition."

His task now is to work properly in Bavaria, said the Bavarian Prime Minister.

In Bavaria, state elections are coming up in 2023, in which the Bavarian Prime Minister is fighting for re-election.

Criticism of the government: danger of the gas crisis underestimated

Before the federal elections last year, Söder had long been considered a promising candidate for chancellor by the CDU and CSU.

After lengthy internal quarrels, the CSU chairman finally had to admit defeat to the then CDU leader and NRW Prime Minister Armin Laschet – who then lost the race for the chancellorship.

Söder also called on the federal government to trade urgently because of the impending gas crisis in winter.

He is worried that the economy will suffer a "real stroke", "millions of people will end up impoverished" and because of a lack of gas for heating "thousands of people, maybe even millions of people will have to be accommodated in some halls in winter".

With regard to a possible gas supply ban by Russia via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, the Bavarian Prime Minister said that the federal government had apparently underestimated this danger.

He pointed out that Italy had recently reported that its gas supply was already secure in winter thanks to contracts with Qatar, which Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) had also visited.

"Where is substitute gas in Germany?".

Aid for Ukraine is important, he is also in favor of more arms deliveries, emphasized the CSU boss.

However, politicians cannot allow “Germany to enter the downward spiral and end up impoverishing millions of people”.