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Andreas Scheuer (CSU)
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Kay Nietfeld/dpa
His seat in the Bundestag will remain empty until the next election: no other CSU politician will replace former Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer. A party spokesman explained this when asked by the German Press Agency. This means that the CSU will only have 44 members by the end of the legislative period.
The background is the current electoral law, which currently does not provide for a replacement procedure in the case of the CSU. The party won 45 direct mandates in Bavaria in the 2021 federal election and thus has more representatives in the Bundestag than it is entitled to in percentage terms. In order to reflect the voting ratio correctly, other parties were subsequently given overhang mandates.
On Easter Monday, Scheuer announced that he wanted to resign his Bundestag mandate after April 1, 2024 and thus before the end of the electoral period and thus leave parliament. The Bundestag confirmed the move, which many initially interpreted as an April Fool's joke. Scheuer initially did not comment on his future plans.
The 49-year-old had already declared in January that he no longer wanted to run in the next federal election. The CSU said at the time that he had not taken the step lightly. Before that, according to dpa information, there had been repeated skeptical voices in the Lower Bavaria CSU district association with a view to Scheuer's possible renewed candidacy.
Scheuer had been a member of the Bundestag since 2002, where he represented the Passau constituency. From 2009 to 2013 he was State Secretary in the Ministry of Transport, and from December 2013 to 2018 he took over the position of CSU General Secretary alongside the then party leader Horst Seehofer. After the 2018 federal election, he became Federal Transport Minister in Angela Merkel's (CDU) fourth cabinet.
As a minister, Scheuer came under massive criticism because of the failed car toll - even within the CSU, he was subsequently seen as a burden by many.
lpz/dpa