There is still a year until the federal election – and the Union is getting ready for it. However, the parliamentary group leaders’ meeting today will focus on more immediate tasks.
According to CDU leader Friedrich Merz, the Union wants to go into the 2025 federal election without making any statements about preferred possible coalition partners. “We will not be entering a coalition election campaign,” Merz told the German Press Agency before a meeting of the executive board of the Union faction in Neuhardenberg. “Instead, we are entering an election campaign of the CDU and the CSU, with the aim of achieving the best possible result for ourselves.” Merz expressed skepticism about the current governing parties, the Greens and the FDP.
Merz: I no longer count on FDP
The FDP is in such a bad shape that one has to assume that it may be eliminated from the Bundestag again in the election. “I would regret that,” said Merz. “But if the FDP gets four percent in the Bundestag election, then that is four percent too much, because we will be missing that.”
If it were able to get eight or nine percent, the FDP could certainly continue to be a force to be reckoned with. “To be honest, I no longer have any hope of the FDP,” the Union faction leader added. “What I see at the moment suggests that the FDP is now on its deathbed again.”
Critical view of “Today’s Greens”
Merz said he shared CSU leader Markus Söder’s critical attitude towards the Greens, “the way they do politics here in Berlin today”. They are currently a party that patronizes people, fails in economic policy and is still “running by their old green ideology”. With “these Greens of today” there will certainly be no agreement for cooperation in the CDU either. We do not know what will happen this time next year.
The CDU leader reiterated: “We rule out working with the AfD and also with the Left Party, if it still exists at all. We have clear party conference resolutions on this.”
Decision on K question “together to be carried through”
With regard to the upcoming decision on the Union’s candidate for chancellor, Merz said: “Markus Söder and I will talk about it in the near future.” Of course, there will also be talks with the CDU’s state chairmen.
“And at the end of the day, the two party leaders of the CDU and CSU make a joint proposal, which they then implement together. This agreement that Markus Söder and I made two and a half years ago is still valid.” Merz confirmed that the decision would be made “in late summer.”
Exam with focus on migration
After the end of the parliamentary summer break, the leadership of the Union faction is meeting today in Neuhardenberg, Brandenburg, for a two-day retreat. The main topics to be discussed are internal security, migration and the modern state, as previously announced.
Guests expected include Federal Police President Dieter Romann and migration researcher Ruud Koopmans from Berlin’s Humboldt University. A new state parliament will be elected in Brandenburg on September 22nd.
The closed meeting is taking place a few days before a possible second migration meeting between the federal government, the Union and the states. The leaders of the Union faction are likely to reiterate their position that immigration to Germany must be significantly limited. To this end, the CDU and CSU believe that controls at the German borders and the rejection of refugees for whose asylum procedures another EU member state is responsible are essential.
Merz gave the traffic light coalition an ultimatum at an election campaign event in Brandenburg an der Havel on Wednesday evening: “If the federal government is not prepared to give us a binding declaration by next Tuesday that the uncontrolled influx at the borders will be stopped and those who still come will be turned back at the borders in Germany, then further talks with the federal government make no sense.”
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
