Just as open as Prien
Wagenknecht also does not rule out an alliance with the CDU
May 4, 2024, 8:48 p.m
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Will there be an eastern alliance between the CDU and the BSW around Sahra Wagenknecht? After CDU Federal Vice President Karin Prien recently commented openly on this, Wagenknecht is following up. Thematically, she justifies this with topics ranging from the school system to migration – but mentions an exclusion criterion.
BSW chairwoman Sahra Wagenknecht is not averse to cooperation with the CDU. She does not rule out an alliance with the Union. “We are running because our country needs a new political beginning,” Wagenknecht told the “Tagesspiegel”. “We want Germany to have a future as an innovative, internationally respected industrial location, for wages and pensions to finally be fair again, for uncontrolled migration to be stopped and for us to continue to live in peace.”
With a view to the elections in the East, she said: “At the state level it is about concrete questions such as schools in which all children learn to read, write and do math properly again, and smartphones have no place at least in primary school. We will be democratic with all “We work together with forces that can advance these concerns.” She added: “We are not available as a majority procurer for ‘business as usual’.”
CDU federal deputy Karin Prien had previously not ruled out her party collaborating with the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance after the three East German state elections – although she was only referring to the state level.
Important state elections in September
Prien, who is also Education Minister in Schleswig-Holstein, told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”: “In the states you will have to look at which personalities are running for the BSW and what political goals are in the election programs. Then you can decide whether there is a local basis for cooperation with the BSW.”
In contrast, Prien continues to reject cooperation with the Left Party and the AfD. The CDU’s “incompatibility decision” still applies here, which excludes any cooperation with the two parties, she said. At the federal level, she “cannot imagine any collaboration with the BSW at the moment.”
State elections are coming up in Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony in September. The situation is particularly complicated in Thuringia: in recent surveys, the AfD was in first place, the CDU in second place and the BSW about the same as the Left in third place. The question of how majorities could be formed in the federal state after the election and what a government could look like is completely open.