The CDU is discussing its new basic program this Saturday. After sharp attacks against the Greens, Friedrich Merz spoke to a guest of all people who is considered a green mastermind. He earns both grumbling and applause.
Parties like to invite guests with whom they can demonstrate that they are open to new ideas. Depending on the guest, this can be risky. The CDU took quite a risk at its policy convention in Berlin: it invited Ralf Fücks.
Fücks is the founder of the think tank Zentrum Liberale Moderne, before that he was head of the green-oriented Heinrich Böll Foundation – and he has been a member of the Greens for 41 years. Fücks does not give a speech to the CDU, but discusses with the party chairman Friedrich Merz – the Merz, who recently accused the Greens of a “penetrative public education attitude”. Also, of course, with Merz, who from the point of view of many Greens constantly talks about gender and thus makes the AfD topics acceptable.
Not only Greens see it that way. A guest article by the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst, in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” was also understood as a warning to Merz not to overdo it with the Kulturkampf and polarization. “Anyone who only makes cheap points and chases after the populists is putting the ax to their own roots and throwing themselves into chaos,” was one of the core sentences of the text, which, on a power-political level, can also be seen as a contribution to a subliminal struggle can read the candidate for chancellor.
“The AfD doesn’t dictate the language area to us”
But the Merz, who may have been meant by that, is not on the stage here in the conference hotel in Berlin, not even the day before at a small party conference of the CDU. Merz advocates that a party like the Union shouldn’t let the AfD dictate topics and language: “Sometimes we have to be able to address problems in the country with clear words. I claim that for myself . That’s not ‘right’ and not ‘AfD-speak’ either. The AfD doesn’t dictate the language area to us, we determine it ourselves.” Compared to earlier statements, Merz sounds less offensive here. Fücks also agrees that the AfD should not determine the issues of the other parties.
For the new basic program that the CDU is currently developing and wants to adopt in the coming year, Merz proposes “Security in Transition” as the working title, noting that it will not look like this in the end because the term ” freedom” is missing. The CDU must give people the feeling that they are able to solve the big problems.
This is the point where Fücks and Merz agree. There are other points too. Fücks demands from the CDU not only – as Merz has done several times – to rule out cooperation with the AfD, but also to be careful not to “adopt the vocabulary of the AfD”. The audience’s reaction shows that this question has not been fully discussed in the CDU. Part of the audience grumbles, another applauds.
“Competition as to who is the more modern bourgeois party”
At the same time, Fücks continued, the CDU must of course distance itself from the Greens, but not in an “equidistance to the AfD and the Greens”, but in such a way that black-green coalitions are also possible. After all, the Greens are a potential partner for the Union. grumbling again. “You have to build bridges, also to this ecologically liberal, modern center,” Fücks insists. “For me, this is the real competition between the Greens and the CDU, who is the more modern, bourgeois party.” grumbling.
There is broad applause when Fücks says that the ecological and social market economy “should be a core brand of the Union”. But then he criticized the CDU for now beating up Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck, even though he was only trying to implement what had been decided under Chancellor Angela Merkel: climate neutrality by 2045.
That is a very exciting point, Merz gets back on. “We agree on the goal.” “No one in this room underestimates the drama of climate change.” But the traffic light’s current climate policy strives for this goal “at the price of massive damage to the institutions of our democracy,” accuses Merz of the traffic light. He has never experienced such disrespectful dealings with the Bundestag. The Union’s speakers made similar statements on Thursday in the Bundestag. Merz also accuses Habeck of making climate policy without and against the population.
At the end of the debate, Merz made it clear where the priorities of the CDU lie for him: firstly in education, because in the end it will be much more expensive if you neglect schools and students. From the point of view of the Union, this is the core of equal opportunities. Second on his list of priorities is “security in the broadest sense,” especially military security. He suggests that the cost of these priorities will require a reallocation of the budget, and in this context he speaks of the social sector being worth a trillion euros. “Saying and writing that will probably be the hardest task we face in the next few months,” said Merz.