The designated CDU leader Friedrich Merz will probably also head the parliamentary group. Your incumbent chairman, Ralph Brinkhaus, says he is retiring in order to avert damage to the party.
The new strong man of the CDU: Friedrich Merz, designated party leader and soon probably also parliamentary group leader of the Union.
The way to the top of the CDU is clear: With his announcement on Thursday evening that he would relinquish his position as parliamentary group leader in the Union, Brinkhaus prevented a power struggle in his party that he probably wouldn’t have been able to win anyway. In a letter to the Union MPs, which is available to the NZZ, he explains the reasons for his decision. The designated CDU leader Friedrich Merz had also announced that he would apply for the position of parliamentary group leader. It’s no secret, Brinkhaus writes, that “there are different opinions between him and Merz, which we can’t eliminate either”. This should not result in a dissent that harms the Union.
Brinkhaus has led the parliamentary group since 2018. In his letter, he asks the Union MPs to support the new group leader, who is to be elected on February 15th.
In this way, Friedrich Merz could become the most influential figure in the Union. At the CDU party conference just under a week ago, the delegates elected him the new party chairman with 94.6 percent of the votes. After several failed attempts, he can now celebrate his successful political comeback almost unchallenged.
Leader of a strong opposition
Merz is 66 years old and has been a member of the CDU since 1972. His political career is as long as it is changeable. In 2002 he was defeated by Angela Merkel in the power struggle for the parliamentary group chairmanship, which he had held two years earlier. After the federal elections in 2009, he withdrew from politics for a few years. When Merkel gave up the party leadership in 2018, Merz saw his hour come, but lost to his competitor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who left office a good two years later.
But now nothing stands in the way of him on his way to a new position of power. “We can say what we think and do what we say,” said Merz at the party conference. He wants to be the leader of a strong opposition that will give his ailing party a new profile. Bourgeois, conservative, economically liberal, in clear differentiation from the AfD: “We have not lost our self-confidence or our civic responsibility for our country.” Germany has a right to a union that serves the country and “provides answers to the pressing questions of the time”.
Merz has repeatedly received severe criticism for his sharp political positions. It was he who introduced the concept of the German “leading culture” into the political debate, which he regarded as a decisive criterion for immigration policy. He was also criticized several times for dubious statements on tolerance towards homosexuality.
New image of the Union
Nevertheless, Merz does not remain in old trench warfare and strikes new tones. He emphasized that there would be no shift to the right with him. The staff at the top of the CDU has now been almost completely reorganized. The Union is dependent on renewing its staid image if, under the leadership of Merz, it wants to rise to the “powerful opposition” against the traffic light government that it has promised.
Merz meanwhile thanked Brinkhaus “for his willingness to put the two tasks of the chairman in the party and parliamentary group in one hand”, as he told the German Press Agency. “We are bundling the work in the party and parliamentary group.”
Brinkhaus stated that the parliamentary group would “of course” remain as a member of parliament. Merz assured him of his support. Now it will be important to fill the announced new program of the Union with life in its unusual role as an opposition party.