Candidate for the chairmanship of the German Christian Democratic Party, Armin Laschet, gestures as he participates in a discussion at the party’s headquarters in Berlin on January 8, 2021.
CHRISTIAN MANG / POOL / AFP) (Photo by CHRISTIAN MANG / POOL / AFP via Getty Images
FRANKFURT – Germany’s ruling CDU party chose Armin Laschet as its new chairman Saturday, potentially paving the way to replace Angela Merkel as chancellor in elections later this year.
Laschet is currently the Prime Minister of Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia region, the country’s most populous state. He beat conservative rival Friedrich Merz 521 to 466 in a vote forced online due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Born in 1961, he was first elected to the Bundestag (German Parliament) in 1994 and his election is seen as a continuation of Merkel’s policy, as he has pledged to keep the CDU firmly in the “center of society”.
With him as chairman, the CDU will likely stick with the message and focus on more climate change policies and environmental issues. He has a strong Catholic background which gives him support from Christian circles within the party.
He is a trained lawyer and also worked as a journalist at the time of German reunification between 1986 and 1991. He is seen as very liberal and popular with the immigrant community in his home state.
If he becomes the CDU’s candidate for chancellor in the September elections, he could be open to various coalitions – power-sharing is a more or less recent tradition in German politics.
He has put forward the idea of a government alongside the liberals, the FDP, in an attempt to win over parts of the business camp within the CDU. But he is also seen as a natural fit for a coalition with the Greens, as he is on good terms with the party and advocates for environmental issues.
But the candidate for chancellor of the CDU will not be determined until the spring. And it is not certain that the newly elected chairman will automatically assume the role of Merkel. Markus Söder, the very popular Bavarian Prime Minister, as well as Jens Spahn, the current Health Minister, can also join the race to lead Europe’s largest economy.
Merkel stepped down as leader of the CDU in 2018, and her replacement Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer stepped down in February 2020 after a series of communication mishaps revealed her as too weak to lead the chancellery.
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