Exclusive
Despite reservations from Berlin, the Union in Erfurt is taking the next step towards forming a government with Wagenknecht’s party. The risks are enormous.
The Thuringian CDU wants to start official exploratory talks with the BSW and the SPD. According to information from the star According to party sources, the state executive committee and parliamentary group are planning to take this step on Monday afternoon. CDU state party leader Mario Voigt will submit a corresponding proposal to the committees, it is said. The decision is to be announced in the evening. The declared aim is to form a government, it was said.
In recent weeks, Voigt has already held bilateral talks with the BSW regional leader Katja Wolf and the SPD regional leader Georg Maier. They all agree that agreement has been reached in many policy areas. The BSW and SPD committees will meet on Monday evening to decide on exploratory talks. The talks are not scheduled to begin until Friday at the earliest. The constitution of the state parliament is planned for Thursday.
The CDU’s national leadership is critical of the negotiations. Party leader Friedrich Merz recently described a coalition with the BSW in Saxony and Thuringia as “very, very unlikely”. Toleration or other forms of cooperation are conceivable, he said.
But it is not just the CDU leadership that is putting the brakes on. The BSW leadership also fears that too much willingness to compromise in the states could undermine the radical populist course in Berlin. Voigt has therefore already met with BSW chairwoman Sahra Wagenknecht. The party founder demands that a future state government advocates a ceasefire in Ukraine and speaks out against the stationing of additional US missiles in Germany.
For Merz, this is inconceivable. As soon as “agreements are made about war and peace that seek to make us into Russia’s sycophants and call into question our ties to NATO and the USA, the line has been crossed,” he recently told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. Because then it is “about the core of our raison d’état”.
Another difficulty for the exploratory talks: CDU, BSW and SPD together only have 44 seats in the Thuringian state parliament – and thus as many seats as AfD and the Left Party combined. This means that in order to overcome the deadlock, Left Party MPs would have to at least abstain from voting in the election of the Prime Minister and later on in passing laws. The current Left Party head of government, Bodo Ramelow, has already announced that he does not want to stand in the way of Voigt’s election.
Source: Stern
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