Status: 05/30/2022 7:21 p.m
The CDU wants to give itself a new basic program in order to find its way back to its old strength. The draft of a “Charter of Fundamental Values” has now been presented. You should locate the party in the middle.
“We have to argue more again – on the matter”: This is how the chairman of the CDU policy commission, Carsten Linnemann, imagines the way to the new policy program. Ultimately, the conflicting interests in the party should result in a complete work – from which each member “can quote the three most important points if they are woken up at three in the morning”.
A CDU grassroots member is not quite sure whether he would quote the basic CDU program of all things if he were woken up at three in the morning; but overall the atmosphere among the members in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus is good in the afternoon. The so-called Charter of Fundamental Values is presented, the first part of the basic program, so to speak.
The new program should be ready in 2024, in time for the European elections. It would only be the fourth that the party has given itself, after 1978, 1994 and 2007. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had started a new basic program with her listening tour in 2019, but it then fizzled out between staff disputes and Corona.
Relying too much on Merkel’s charisma
Unlike the SPD, the CDU has seen itself less and less as a program party than as a governing party. When in doubt, pragmatic action was more important than programmatic sharpness, especially during Angela Merkel’s tenure. The chairman of the program committee, Carsten Linnemann, said years ago that the chancellor had been relied too much on the chancellor’s charisma during election campaigns.
Today he emphasizes again that the CDU failed on three points in the federal election campaign – “no heads, no content, no unity”. That has to be different.
The CDU is in the middle of the charter of basic values, which the CDU board of directors and then the party congress should decide first. Chairman Friedrich Merz also clearly wants to occupy this position for his party. The CDU is the only political force that does not see stability and change as irreconcilable opposites. The CDU should not stand still when the world is changing. In view of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, it is becoming clear that freedom and security are interdependent.
Climate protection as an important goal
In the draft of the charter, the CDU emphasizes on the one hand its Christian-social, liberal and conservative roots. On the other hand, consistent climate protection is mentioned as an important goal, and there is talk of a “social and ecological market economy”. That doesn’t go down well with everyone in the party.
Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer states that even in the current situation you can see that the government is missing large parts of the concept when it comes to the energy transition, the economy is feeling it, you can see it in the prices, and the Union has to take that into account. Mario Voigt, deputy head of the program commission, also insists that the CDU must remain the “party of the little people,” especially in the East. Affordability of life is an important issue here, as many work in the low-wage sector.
A clear distinction between the AfD and the Left Party can also be found in the “Charter of Fundamental Values”: The CDU expressly distances itself “from a libertarian individualism in which the sole focus is on the individual claim to freedom, as well as from identity-political and socialist, national-socialist and ethnic thinking that gives priority to groups or ideologies over individuals.” With Friedrich Merz, it sounds like this, addressed to the members: “They are co-thinkers, forward thinkers, forward thinkers. Not lateral thinkers.”
Become more attractive to women and minorities
After the previous state elections this year, a new, solid position is important for the CDU. Although it has made clear gains in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, in its longstanding core competence, economic policy, it is sometimes well behind the SPD in polls. Some of their core constituency, the older voters, have defected to the SPD.
Become more attractive for women, for minorities, for people with a migration background: That is only part of the strategy of how the CDU wants to find its way back to its old strength with its basic program.