Former Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer gave up the CSU district presidency in Lower Bavaria on Saturday after more than seven years. At the district party conference in Dingolfing, the Bavarian Minister of Construction Christian Bernreiter was elected the new district leader with around 98 percent of the votes, as a party spokesman reported. The 59-year-old did not have an opponent. Scheuer had already announced at the beginning of the year that he would not run again for district chairman. The 48-year-old member of the Bundestag had headed the district association since February 2016. Scheuer is held responsible for the debacle with the failed car toll in Germany. As was recently announced, the federal government has to pay 243 million euros in damages for the failed project.
Last week, Scheuer also once again provoked discussions with his voting behavior in the Bundestag. Scheuer and CSU MP Alexander Radwan voted in favor of an AfD motion in the Bundestag’s Europe Committee. About that first had the Mirror reported. On Saturday, Radwan firmly rejected the suspicion that he was close to the right-wing party. “My father immigrated from North Africa more than 60 years ago. To assume that I would work together with the AfD cannot be surpassed in terms of absurdity,” said Radwan. “This is another attempt to use the right club to silence colleagues in the Bundestag who don’t agree with the traffic light.” The AfD motion, for which Radwan and Scheuer voted, had called for the vote on a draft law presented at short notice to be removed from the agenda. Radwan explained this by saying that he assumed the request had come from the Union. “After all, we were the first to address this,” he told the news magazine.
In the Upper Palatinate, too, the district board of the Christsozialen was re-elected on Saturday, but there was no change at the top. According to a party spokeswoman, Bavaria’s Finance Minister Albert Füracker was re-elected in Lappersdorf (Regensburg district) with around 98 percent and will remain in office for two more years. He also had no competitor in the vote. The 55-year-old has been head of the district association in the Upper Palatinate since 2015. The CSU is divided into a total of ten district associations. On the one hand, there is such a sub-association in each of the seven administrative districts of the country. There are also separate district associations in the cities of Munich and Augsburg and in the Nuremberg-Fürth-Schwabach region. The district chairmen are considered influential in the party.