Application for the top of the CDU
Like Norbert Röttgen, Chancellor Helge Braun is also running for the CDU chairmanship
Chancellery Minister Helge Braun (CDU)
© Michael Kappeler / DPA
And there were already two of them: At the end of the first week of applications, there are two candidates for the CDU chairmanship. Norbert Röttgen and Helge Braun both want to inherit Armin Laschet. And there could be even more.
The executive head of the chancellery, Helge Braun, is running for the office of CDU chairman. The 49-year-old announced this on Friday in an online meeting of the state board of the Hessian CDU, as announced by state chairman Volker Bouffier. Braun also presented his conceptual and organizational ideas for the renewal of the CDU. “With this candidacy, the members of the German CDU receive a prominent offer of personnel with many years of government and party experience,” said Bouffier in a statement.
The CDU foreign politician Norbert Röttgen had previously announced his candidacy. He said at the federal press conference in Berlin that he was running, “out of the deep conviction that there should be no” business as usual “, and certainly no” going back. “It is more about” a renewal of the CDU with defined content. “The Christian democratic idea for our time has to be worked out with the members, and it has to compete with the other parties. “
It is expected that Friedrich Merz, the former chairman of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, will also run to succeed party leader Armin Laschet. However, he has not yet commented on this in detail.
Laschet resigns after a year
With Laschet as candidate for chancellor, the Union had a historically poor result of 24.1 percent in the federal election. Laschet is therefore relinquishing the chairmanship of the party after a year. The former Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia is now just a simple member of the Bundestag.
The new chairman of the CDU, which currently has around 400,000 members, is to be elected at a federal party conference on January 21 in Hanover. Before that, the CDU wants to conduct a member survey for the first time in its history. That is where the decision will actually be made as to who will be at the head of the party in the future. Unsuccessful applicants should no longer compete at the party congress.