Armin Laschet (L), party chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Prime Minister of Bavaria and the chairman of the Christian Social Union (CSU), Markus Soeder, will arrive on April 11 for a joint press conference on the occasion of a private parliamentary group meeting of CDU and CSU, 2021 in Berlin, Germany.
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Early Tuesday morning, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative alliance finally chose a candidate to represent the center-right bloc in the country’s national elections later this year, after months of uncertainty and delay.
Until then, neither the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) nor its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), had managed to agree on who would lead the Conservatives to the Sept. 26 elections. announced in 2018 that she would not run for a fifth term in office.
However, at a meeting of the CDU board on Monday evening, a majority of senior party members voted to nominate Armin Laschet, the leader of the CDU and the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, as chancellor for this year’s election.
About 77.5% (31 members) of the party’s federal executive committee voted for the party leader, according to reports from German news outlet Deutsche Welle and Reuters, quoting sources, while his rival Markus Soeder got only 9 votes.
Soeder, who leads the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the CSU, had said on Monday that he would respect the CDU committee’s decision. He reportedly declined an invitation from CDU leader Armin Laschet to attend the virtual rally on Monday night, saying he did not want to “interfere,” Reuters reported.
The CDU tweeted that night that before the vote for Laschet, there had been “a long and intense debate among the members of the 17 regional associations, district associations and associations about people, election prospects and party base voting.”
Party mood
The alliance’s inability to propose a candidate so far had been the source of frustration for CDU-CSU officials and had not been lost to opposition politicians who could gain influence in the formation of a new government in September.
The CDU-CSU is ahead of several polls, but the Greens are not that far behind. Four polls held in Germany in mid-April indicated support for the alliance was around 28-31%, while the same polls showed support for the Greens in the range of 20-22%.
Strategists expect the election’s most likely outcome to be that the CDU-CSU will form a coalition with the Greens. While it is unlikely that, should the CDU-CSU perform very poorly, the Greens could form a coalition with other parties such as the Social Democrats or the Free Democratic Party.
On Monday, the Green Party confirmed that Annalena Baerbock will be its candidate for the next German chancellor.
Jürgen Trittin, a Bundestag member and former leader of the German Green Party, told CNBC on Monday that the party now had an outside chance that it could even lead the German government in September.
“I have never seen such a crisis in my political life within the conservative Christian Democratic party,” said Trittin, arguing that the CDU-CSU’s indecision over which candidate will lead the bloc to the election was detrimental. been for the alliance.
“Even if they decide now, the other side of the party is so hurt and damaged that they will have a real problem in the election campaign and as a potential coalition partner for anyone.”
The Green Party is gaining confidence and even dares to dream that it could overtake the CDU / CSU when it comes to the vote in September.
“Anything is possible,” Konstantin von Notz, a member of the Bundestag and Green Party, told CNBC on Tuesday.
“There should be no doubt, it is going to be a very tough election campaign,” he said, adding, “People from all parties are going to be very hard on us because the Greens say we could be the leading party and that’s what makes … wake up every enemy. “
Chicken game
Ahead of Laschet’s approval by the CDU overnight, Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, noted on Monday that the “chicken game” between Laschet and Soeder seemed to be coming to an end and noted what a chancellor of Laschet could mean for Germany.
The choice between Soeder and Laschet “is about style, charisma and perceived appeal rather than major differences in content,” he said in a note.
“Laschet is widely seen as the continuity candidate. He has usually supported Merkel on other policies, including her approach to the 2015 refugee crisis. His somewhat humble style and penchant for mitigating and bridging differences resembles Merkel’s approach,” noted Schmieding.
He added that Laschet is also likely to “go along” with additional tax burden sharing in the EU and the eurozone.