party congress
CDU debates about equality and the C in the party name
CDU leader Friedrich Merz. The federal party conference of the CDU has been held in person for the first time since the corona pandemic. photo
© Michael Kappeler/dpa
CDU leader Merz was spared the first internal setback – the party congress clarified the long dispute over the controversial topic of women’s quotas in his favor. A guest speaker is eagerly awaited on the second day.
After the approval of a women’s quota in the CDU, its opponents also suffered a defeat in a debate about the demand for equality between women and men. After a long and controversial discussion, the party congress in Hanover voted to include the goal of equal rights as well as equality in the new basic program. The term “bourgeois” is to be included in the program.
Critics of the term “equality” from the Junge Union and the MIT association of small and medium-sized businesses stressed that they didn’t want to place themselves above the decisions of the individual, it was all about equal opportunities. JU and MIT are also among the main opponents of a women’s quota. For some in the CDU, equality is a “leftist battleground”.
Base values need to be adjusted
The head of the Women’s Union, Annette Widmann-Mauz, said, on the other hand, that basic values must be adapted to the changing times. Equality has nothing to do with egalitarianism. CDU Vice Karin Prien explained that equality has been a fundamental position of the CDU since 2007. Falling behind such concepts would be strange. North Rhine-Westphalian Minister Ina Scharrenbach warned that the CDU would distance itself from society if it did not include the word equality in its program.
On Friday evening, after decades of dispute, the delegates decided to gradually introduce a women’s quota in the CDU. With their approval, the delegates spared party leader Friedrich Merz the first setback in his seven-month term in office.
The new “Charter of Fundamental Values”
In a “Charter of Fundamental Values,” the CDU wants to define guidelines for the process leading to a new basic program. The current policy program dates from 2007, the new program would be the fourth. It is to be decided at a party conference in 2024 before the European elections.
The deputy head of the CDU and head of the Policy Commission, Carsten Linnemann, said that the language of the program must also be attractive for young people and created in a spirit of optimism. That was also necessary because the CDU was “pale to say the least” in last year’s federal election.
The C in CDU should stay that way
The historian Andreas Rödder, who works with Linnemann on the new program, said that the term bourgeois puts more emphasis on the creativity of the individual, rather than on a state that increasingly patronizes the citizen and neglects his core tasks. Critics said, however, that the C in the party name, which stands for the Christian image of man, does not need to be supplemented, it stands for itself. A delegate from Baden-Würrtemberg warned against obscuring the C. “The C is our trademark, it needs no complement.”