Germany Day of the JU: Junge Union settles accounts with CDU and CSU

Germany Day of the JU
Junge Union settles accounts with CDU and CSU

By Maximilian Beer, Münster

The Junge Union’s Germany Day is considered the first public mood test by the CDU and CSU. At the start of the three-day meeting, the young people of the party are taking apart the previous election campaigns of the mother parties. The appearance of a possible candidate for the CDU chairmanship is pale.

The Junge Union (JU) describes its Germany Day as a “family reunion”. And as it is in intimate circles, the first conversation is often determined by those who did not come at all. Because they have something else in mind, such as attending a CSU event in Upper Franconia. This is also the case on Friday in Münster, at the first big party event of the CDU and CSU after the federal election. At the press conference at the start of the three-day meeting, several journalists asked about the relative from Munich who canceled at short notice: Markus Söder, chairman of the parent party CSU.

He would have found the visit “necessary,” replies JU chief Tilman Kuban. Yes, he spoke to Söder on the phone, but the content of the conversation was confidential. What is remarkable – after all, secrecy was not the strength of the Union in the end. Then a few words about Armin Laschet: His promise for Saturday is “to be credited to him”, the CDU boss shows character. Especially against the background, said Kuban, that the JU would have preferred to see Söder as a common candidate for chancellor.

But that’s it with the praise for federal politics. What follows that evening in the Halle Münsterland, whether in front of the press or in the hall in front of 318 delegates, is a settlement with the election campaign of the sister parties – with the free choice of the top candidate and your own program. The sting of the historical defeat in the federal election, it sits deep in the party youth.

“Impression of sheer excessive demands”

The frustration of the younger generation becomes most evident in an election analysis by the JU federal executive committee. One of the seven pages says that you have lost “out of your own weakness”. It was true that the Union parties had “relied on a left-slide campaign” in the last few weeks before the election. But this is also the “admission that you have not managed to get through to the voters with your own heads and messages and above all your own narrative”.

The JU leadership is very detailed when it comes to the organization of the election campaign. “Planned campaign elements” were “canceled at short notice and creative ideas were nipped in the bud in long approval loops”. The disappointment here is directed at the address of the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus in Berlin, where General Secretary Paul Ziemiak runs the business. There is talk of an “impression of sheer excessive demands”, the “record for answering an inquiry by the candidate service” in the CDU party headquarters is “no less than two months”.

Anger over piercing

“Unfortunately, Armin Laschet was unable to reach people’s hearts,” says a separate chapter on the candidate for chancellor. On the contrary, many people in the Union had refused to vote “because of the availability of staff”. A lack of support from the federal cabinet and party leaders is denounced as well as “a culture of disloyalty and the penetration of confidential communication to the press”.

So that things run better for the sister parties in the future, the Junge Union calls for greater involvement of the members. Three times in a row, the CDU federal party congress or the CDU federal executive committee made personnel decisions that “found little support from the party base and the population”. Meant are the elections of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Armin Laschet as party leaders in 2018 and 2021, as well as Laschet’s election as candidate for chancellor.

The JU is counting on the fact that a member survey for the successor of Armin Laschet will be initiated at the conference of CDU district chairmen on October 30th. Its result would not be binding for the CDU special party congress, which is to take place at the end of this or the beginning of next year. But after the latest disappointments, there is agreement in Halle Münsterland that the will of the members must not be ignored. In the run-up to the event, Kuban had also proposed a “Union Council”. The new committee made up of CDU and CSU politicians should in future prepare the choice of the candidate for chancellor and a joint program.

Sharp tones towards Munich

JU members should remember two moments of this evening. There would be the speech of the host Johannes Winkel, state chairman of the North Rhine-Westphalian JU. “Anyone who appears in the election campaign like Armin Laschet” should not appear after the election as if they could become Chancellor – “but above all take responsibility for the result”. Cheers in the hall. Because this result of 24.1 percent, which should be made clear here, is not a narrow defeat against the SPD, but a humiliation for a people’s party.

The applause grows louder when Winkel speaks of the man who was defeated by Laschet in the internal Union dispute over the candidacy for chancellor. “Anyone who follows in the election campaign like Markus Söder,” he called in the direction of Munich, “shouldn’t talk about questions of style after the election, but go to confession.” According to Winkel, he thinks the messages have reached both of them.

Shortly afterwards, Friedrich Merz also arrived. Accompanied by a bunch of cameramen and standing ovations, the 65-year-old still has the aura of a bearer of hope in this second memorable moment of the evening. The Junge Union would have liked to have Merz as party leader in the past. But he lost twice, first against Kramp-Karrenbauer and then against Laschet. Before Jens Spahn, Carsten Linnemann and Ralph Brinkhaus, Merz is the first guest this weekend to have chances of a future leadership role in the CDU – whether as party leader or part of a team.

The Union as a “restructuring case”

He makes no secret of the fact that Merz would also welcome a member survey for the CDU party chairmanship. He is still considered a grassroots man. “With this election result, the Union has become a serious political restructuring case at risk of insolvency,” said the former Union parliamentary group leader. He says that the year 2021 was “not a reference year for Christian dealings with one another in the Union”.

But Merz’s speech might not get caught up in the troubled Münsterland hall. Not even when he comes up with decarbonization or the fact that muezzin calls will be heard in Cologne in the future. Of course there is freedom of religion, emphasizes Merz. And then pushes: “But we must be able to ask the question: Who is he calling to prayer? Is it only the men or is it also the women? And what is being prayed there?” There should be no lawless spaces.

When asked from the hall, Merz leaves open whether he will run for the chairmanship of the CDU. He has not yet decided that for himself. Like the other potential candidates, he also seems to be waiting for the decision on an electoral process – he had recently made it clear that he does not want to run for a fight again. But Merz wants to give a message to the offspring who are hoping for a generation change within the party on this evening: “Young brooms sweep well,” says the 65-year-old in his speech. “But the old brush knows the corners.”

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