Status: 03.01.2022 10:59 a.m.
Friedrich Merz is to be elected as the new CDU chairman at a digital party conference in just under two weeks. Then he takes over a CDU at its lowest point. Many challenges await him in 2022 – too many?
The CDU has had a tough year: The dispute with the CSU over the candidacy for chancellor, the historically poor result in the federal election and a dramatic loss of importance in the shadow of the new traffic light coalition. A majority at the base has decided: Friedrich Merz should lead the party out of this valley. There are huge tasks waiting for him this year.
Probably the biggest construction site for Merz is the renewal of the content of the CDU after 16 years as Chancellor of Angela Merkel. The Union’s election manifesto for the 2021 federal election spoke volumes: a little bit of climate protection, less burdens for companies, a generational pension, a more modern administration, there was a little bit of everything. But the big hit, the headline, the party’s DNA – it was missing. The CDU received the receipt on election day.
More to the right?
Merz now says: The issues are obvious. It is about the future of the social market economy in times of climate change, about internal and external security and about a new generation contract. But Merz also knows that the renewal of the content of a party takes time. All of this “won’t go within two years”, he recently announced and probably wanted to dampen excessive expectations of him right away.
Many conservatives want Merz to move the CDU more to the right again. He himself, on the other hand, is now trying to shed his image as a hardliner: Merz, for example, has just reaffirmed his approval of the right to adopt homosexual couples and threatened party members with being thrown out if they worked with the AfD. The CDU should have exciting discussions ahead of them.
Make the CDU younger and more feminine
The party has to become younger, more feminine and more diverse, that’s what you hear more and more often within the CDU. If Merz – himself a face from the past – wants to implement this credibly, he should build as many new heads as possible around himself.
The former Berlin Senator for Social Affairs Mario Czaja as Secretary General and the 34-year-old Christina Stumpp from Baden-Württemberg as his deputy should bring a breath of fresh air. In addition, Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer and the former chairman of the SME and Economic Union, Carsten Linnemann, could move up as new CDU deputy chiefs – in their mid-forties, they go through at least within the party as junior staff.
But that won’t be enough: Merz must succeed in changing the climate within the CDU and breaking old structures so that significantly more women will have a chance in the front row in the future. A pretty big building site in a party whose members are on average 61 years old and more than 70 percent male.
Make a Union out of the Union again
In 2022, however, it will also be decisive whether Merz can reconcile the CDU again – also with its sister party. The fight for the candidacy for chancellor was fierce, the subsequent attacks by CSU boss Markus Söder on the joint candidate and CDU chairman Armin Laschet left deep wounds. Merz also sees it that way, but has already tried to reconcile: CDU and CSU are mutually dependent, he emphasized. Defining the relationship with the sister party beyond a purely functional alliance will probably be one of the toughest tasks for Merz this year.
How much he cares about unity, even within the CDU, Merz was able to prove in the spring: Then the Union faction in the Bundestag votes again on its chairmanship. Ralph Brinkhaus absolutely wants to remain leader of the opposition, as it is one of the few posts in which a CDU politician can currently be visible and exert influence.
But Merz has so far demonstratively left open whether he would rather reach for this post himself and expand his power with it. But with that he would almost certainly start a new dispute in the CDU, especially within the parliamentary group. And the Union cannot really afford any more arguments.
And then win elections
Because there will be several state elections in 2022 – the next big construction site for Merz. In March, elections will be held in Saarland, followed in May by Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia. With Tobias Hans, Daniel Günther and Hendrik Wüst, three CDU Prime Ministers are fighting for their offices and in all three federal states it did not look like a clear victory for the CDU in the last polls, rather the opposite.
As the new party leader, Merz will have to show right at the beginning of the new year whether he can make the difference in the election campaign and help his party friends to victory. Because if the state elections are lost, the CDU faces a fate similar to that of the SPD: an even deeper case. And then the magic of the beginning should quickly evaporate even with glowing Merz fans.