The CDU’s signature tune | tagesschau.de

At the beginning of May it is to be decided at the CDU party conference in Berlin: the CDU’s new basic program. The party hopes that this will bring more clarity to its course, but the piece also has room for a few wry notes.

It has been a few years since General Secretary Carsten Linnemann started work on the CDU’s new policy program. At the end of the process he declared that he wanted to have a theme tune for the CDU. A melody with clear CDU tones: less mainstream, more bass, more rock and maybe a few heavy metal tones. They are intended to make the CDU distinguishable from the political competition.

Linnemann has now composed 75 pages together with party friends. They surveyed the base, went to a retreat in Italy and got approval from the board and the chairman.

Friedrich Merz explains the draft as future-proof, “not written backwards, but forwards”. However, there are certainly antique tones in it. The party rocked the concept of the dominant culture a quarter of a century ago. Today, that hardly blows anyone away. Nuclear power – that is also a debate from back then that has now been practically settled. And yet it is the conservative notes that the Merz CDU emphasizes, even though it doesn’t just want to be conservative.

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So the CDU is discussing who it wants to be. What should the signature tune sound like? The base is surveyed again – in Mainz, Hanover, Chemnitz, Cologne, Stuttgart and Berlin. In the end, the party conference in May will decide on the final composition. But then it’s more about footnotes and small print, because the big chords are there.

A stringent asylum policy with asylum centers in third countries, for example – very heavy metal. Then tax relief for the middle, which feels more like pop. Plus a compulsory social year, which is more in the direction of Taylor Swift. So that’s what it sounds like, the basic tenor of the Merz CDU. The piece is also a farewell to the Merkel era with its more subdued tones. The Thuringian CDU leader Mario Voigt sums up: “It is a program for encouragers and not naysayers.”

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The CDU has identified the naysayers in the AfD, and the CDU sees itself as a source of encouragement. It is definitely courageous to include an extended working life in the program and thus want to win new party members and voters.

Even swearing to the revered debt brake shows courage in a certain way. Because if the CDU comes back to power, it will have to deal with this brake itself. Those in power can tell you a thing or two about what that means. But that is a thing of the future and a basic program is not an election program and certainly not a coalition agreement. For Linnemann and all the others, it’s just a matter of writing down what the CDU stands for.

The new basic program is written for the next ten years. Friedrich Merz will then be almost 80 years old. Who knows who will then set the tone in the CDU.