“Union of Values” founded as a party around Hans

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Hans-Georg Maaßen with colleagues in Remagen

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Jana Rodenbusch / REUTERS

He left the CDU in January and now has a new party: Hans-Georg Maaßen has founded a new right-wing party together with around 20 supporters from the “Werteunion” association.

To do this, they first gathered in Remagen-Rolandseck, south of Bonn, and boarded an excursion ship. »12:32. Done!” wrote Maaßen on the short message service X. Several participants in the meeting also confirmed that the foundation had been completed. Several groups had called for protests against the constitution of the right-wing party; they feared a shift to the right as a result of the “Union of Values”.

When the party was founded, a statute and a program should also be decided. The 61-year-old Maaßen says he wants to run for party leadership. The conservative association “Werteunion”, which has long been close to the CDU and has several thousand members, set the course for the founding of the party in January at a general meeting in Erfurt – with the transfer of the naming rights.

Wants to run in state elections in the east

The Maaßen Party is the second prominent new formation in 2024. At the beginning of the year, the Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) alliance of the former left-wing politician had already formed as a party. According to representatives of the “Union of Values,” the new party will run in the state elections in September in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, but not in the European elections in June.

In an interview broadcast on Friday evening, Maaßen told broadcaster tv.berlin that the “Union of Values” wanted to fill a gap between the Union parties CDU and CSU and a more radical AfD. “We stand for classic bourgeois values ​​that have made Germany strong and that ultimately shaped the CDU,” said Maaßen. The “Union of Values” is for freedom, the rule of law, democracy, tolerance, but also for the state to withdraw from people’s lives. A colleague recently told SPIEGEL: "We're basically AfD without Russia."

Maaßen, against whom the CDU executive board initiated expulsion proceedings in 2023, resigned from the CDU at the beginning of the year. He recently made it public that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had stored data about him in the area of ​​right-wing extremism. He was president of the authority himself from 2012 to 2018.

apr/dpa