“Will harm the CDU”
Maassen wants to defend himself against party expulsion
2/10/2023, 6:01 p.m
The CDU Presidium wants to initiate an expulsion procedure against the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Maassen. The right-wing conservative politician allows a deadline to leave the party on his own. Maassen would also use legal means to ensure that he remained in the CDU.
Former President for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, also wants to take legal action against a possible CDU party expulsion. “The courts will probably decide on that first,” said Maassen in an interview published with the right-wing weekly Junge Freiheit on the prospects of success of such a procedure. He was also “convinced that not a single one in the (CDU) federal presidium takes the allegations against me seriously”.
The CDU federal executive wants to deal with a possible party exclusion Maassens on Monday. At the end of January, the CDU presidium accused him of “continuously violating the principles and order of the party” and repeatedly using “language from the milieu of anti-Semites and conspiracy ideologues to ethnic expressions”.
The CDU committee called on the federal executive board to “initiate party exclusion proceedings against Maassen and to withdraw his membership rights with immediate effect” if he did not resign of his own accord. However, Maassen let a deadline set for this expire last Sunday.
Maassen was then given another deadline to comment in writing on the allegations against him by Thursday. When asked on Friday, the CDU did not want to comment on whether he did that.
“I was not guilty of anything”
The former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution extensively rejected the allegations of the CDU leadership in the “Junge Freiheit”. “I don’t see that I’m guilty of anything and that the conditions for expulsion from the party are met,” he said. “Many CDU members have told me that they have asked the party leadership to reconsider their opinion.” However, he was obviously considered dangerous “for the party establishment, which in my eyes is tangled”.
“I still think the whole thing is an unfortunate and ill-considered matter that will damage the party a lot,” Maassen said. Maaßen recommended that the CDU “look for a solution and not want to bang your head against the wall”. “The way I am treated will also show where the CDU stands in the future,” he said. “Will it become one of four left-wing parties in the Bundestag? Or will it be elected again for the middle-class, which does not follow the left-wing course?”
Party leader Friedrich Merz “disappointed many of his supporters and voters” who had hoped for a more conservative orientation than under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, said Maassen. This is one of the reasons why he took over the presidency of the right-wing conservative values union at the end of January. He sees “the need to create a citizens’ movement between a left-wing Union and the AfD”.