The chairman of the right-wing conservative group Values Union, Hans-Georg Maaßen, said he resigned from the CDU on Thursday. The Thuringian politician announced this on Platform X.
With this step he forestalls his expulsion from the CDU. After the Union of Values decided to found its own party last weekend, the CDU leadership announced that members of the new party would have to leave the CDU. Their statutes prohibit membership in two political parties.
The Values Union was originally founded as a group within the CDU and CSU in order to give the union a more conservative image. However, according to information from Values Union circles, many CDU members gradually left the group. The CDU leadership, for its part, initiated party expulsion proceedings against Maaßen and accused him of radicalization and a lack of differentiation from the AfD.
Members of the Values Union took part in the controversial conference with right-wing extremists in Potsdam. Maaßen himself wrote on Thursday that, in his opinion, the CDU had abandoned its values and basic beliefs in recent years. “The Merz Union can no longer be reformed,” he wrote, alluding to CDU chairman Friedrich Merz.
The 61-year-old has been in constant conflict with the CDU leadership for a long time – they accuse him, among other things, of using “language from the milieu of anti-Semites and conspiracy ideologists, including ethnic expressions.”
In its own words, the Values Union wants to launch a “conservative-liberal” party that will also take part in the state elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg in September.