There are busy weeks behind Kerstin Schreyer. The construction and transport minister from the CSU made a test drive in a battery train with the prime minister in Central Franconia, launched a “Bavarian cycling offensive” at press events, among other things, or defended the balance sheet of state housing construction. Incidentally, she reported to the state parliament on local transport, ranted against the Austrian Tyrol because of the truck clearance at the border and requested a special conference of the German building ministers. In Augsburg she gave the go-ahead for her company’s service office and turned up at the winter service in Sauerlach near Munich: everything okay?
At the beginning of 2020, Schreyer came to the “super ministry” that was once built for Ilse Aigner – and until recently he rarely had press appointments. You could send a ground-breaking photo into the world every day or pose on locomotives. Some were already wondering what a young Markus Söder would have fabricated in the department. Corona, Schreyer once told the SZ, is the reason that citizens “don’t want us to produce vanity now”. In the background and in “switching” with associations, you put fundamental things on the track. Now many in the CSU perceive increased “ambitions”. Not only with Schreyer, but with several cabinet members.
Some ministers have been in action since Söder announced a “refinement” of the team
Well-meaning people say that Omikron allows that, logically. Others say some ministers are just in action since Söder announced he would “refine his team”, likely with a major cabinet reshuffle this year. And since alleged shaky candidates have already been named in media reports, Schreyer too. These days the topic hung like a deep fog over political Munich. “The thing is in the air,” say knowledgeable people – it is only open when Söder “considers the time ripe”.
There is acute reason for speculation that there was a fundamental debate in the CSU parliamentary group last week as a replacement for the failed exam. “I absorb all of that, of ideas and wishes,” said Söder before the question of whether something would be decided. The confidential meeting in the state parliament is said to have been about the “brand core” of the CSU, about the easing of Corona and about the competition with the free voters in the country. Participants assert that personal details played no role at all, Söder also said nothing about it – not even clever “between the lines readers” would find what they were looking for. That would speak in turn for the fact that the whole thing is not coming any time soon. And that there would be more time for ministers to get hands-on.
Söder himself never named names or alleged wobblers
Söder himself never named names or alleged wobblers – but called for his ministers to be visible to the public and outlined important issues. Some people quickly figure something out. Just as potential tableaux have long been circulating among state political augurs, including regional proportional representation and gender quotas. Basically, hardly any of the twelve ministers and state secretaries of the CSU should feel one hundred percent safe. Most likely: Söder’s confidante Albert Füracker (finance), Florian Herrmann (State Chancellery), to whom Söder recently attested a “subba job”; the same should apply to Michaela Kaniber (agriculture).
Klaus Holetschek (health), who has an enormous presence due to the pandemic and was the third most popular state politician in the BR-Bayern trend, should be set, behind Söder and state parliament president Ilse Aigner. In addition, Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, if he wants to continue after almost 15 years in the post. However, he shows no signs of tiredness.
One still hears that the CSU leader is not someone who gives bad grades to the Council of Ministers coram publico, “unlike others”. This means predecessor Horst Seehofer, who tended to do so. Incidentally, in the testimony for the then Finance Minister Markus Söder, he spoke of the famous “dirty things” that made a career as a political term in the race for the Union’s chancellor candidacy last year.