The youth organization of the CDU and CSU elects Johannes Winkel as the new chairman. Friedrich Merz scolds the Chancellor, Jens Spahn warns of a “climate dictatorship”. The Union is nibbling on its electoral defeat, but prefers not to talk about it.
The CDU leader Friedrich Merz appeared remarkably cautious in front of the Junge Union, the Secretary General Mario Czaja attacked the traffic light coalition all the more clearly.
When the Hessian Junge Union (JU) made headlines for the last time, it was still summer and the hit was called “Layla”. The ditty about a “puff mama” was a thorn in the side of some folk festival operators, which is why the Hessian JU showed solidarity with the anthem. It sounded at the end of the summer party conference, the state chairman clapped to the beat.
The same state chairman, Sebastian Sommer, was now hosting the three-day federal congress in bitterly cold Fulda, which is called Germany Day and at which Johannes Winkel was elected to succeed Tilman Kuban, a member of the Bundestag, at the head of the youth organization of the CDU and CSU. Queen, Andreas Gabalier and Calvin Harris rang out from the speakers. The JU spoke, toasted and danced for courage and overlooked some self-contradictions.
Merz considers himself the better chancellor
In earlier years, Germany Day turned into celebrations of homage to Friedrich Merz. As long as its brand essence was gnarly conservative, the hearts of the delegates flew to it. In the era of programmatically disinterested party leader Angela Merkel, Merz embodied the reliably flickering hope of differentiation. The JU credits itself with having made it possible to choose the party chairman through a member survey and thus paved the way for Merz.
Of course, love grew cold at the federal party conference of the CDU in September. There, Merz entered the arena to enforce an internal party quota for women. The outgoing JU boss Kuban drew a bitter conclusion in Fulda: With the quota vote, the party did not create trust, showed no competence, and “we did not win a single vote with it”.
Merz, however, had come to East Hesse to give a keynote address on the global and domestic political situation. He didn’t bother with the quota or other gender issues. Instead, the chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, as soon as Queen’s classic “Don’t Stop Me Now” had faded away, lashed out at the chancellor and his party.
The SPD, Merz complained, still has a “disturbed relationship” with the Bundeswehr, and to date nothing has been spent on the 100 billion special fund for military training. Bans, regulations, patronizing and paternalism triumphed in the “traffic light”. With every pore, Merz made it clear: he thought he was the better head of government.
A general secretary puffs out his cheeks
The sound was set. CDU, CSU and JU came to an intimate understanding in Fulda for a while. Together they are building a “bulwark against the new socialism with gender asterisks”, against “dictatorship” and paternalism through the “traffic light” – said Secretary General Martin Huber, who hurried from Munich instead of CSU chairman Söder.
Together they want to prevent a “planned economy” that could degenerate into a “climate dictatorship”, said Jens Spahn, CDU board member and former Minister of Health. Now they will slow down citizen money, which is based on an “inhuman” ideology and is an invitation to the “Abu-Chakers of this world” to take advantage of the German social system, according to CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja.
In general, the federal government’s plans to transform unemployment benefit II into a citizen’s allowance with protective assets and a waiting period are a welcome object for the Union’s need to raise its profile. The Hessian Minister-President Boris Rhein vivaciously explained that the basic income begins with “a gradual path to another state”, the turning away from the principle of promoting and demanding.
There is a risk of a “tax-financed social benefit” (Merz) that will lead to the “reversal of our welfare state” (Czaja). The speakers puffed out their cheeks so much that a compromise with the “traffic light” is hard to imagine. But one of these is currently being worked on.
Hendrik Wüst does not want a program party
Political youth organizations are strange hermaphrodites. They pretend to be subversive out of love for orthodoxy. The Juso and the left-wing youth would like to call out the socialist world revolution as early as tomorrow, the Young Alternative dreams of a militant nationalism, the Young Liberals long for the minimal state, the Young Union hopes for a conservative turn.
In Fulda, this ideal-typical contrast, which of course always pushed for a synthesis with the real political situation, weakened noticeably. You saw it in some debates, felt it in nuances, heard it in speeches, primarily in that of North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst.
Tilman Kuban had just inculcated his people to accept the Kulturkampf and show bourgeois steadfastness when Wüst, Germany’s biggest Merkelian, received loud applause. Wüst’s speech lay smooth like a pebble in the current of the zeitgeist.
The head of government of a black-green state government awarded Merz attitude grades; “The bottom line is that it’s great,” was Wüst’s interim report for the opposition trainee and young party leader Merz. With a half-sentence, Wüst brushed aside the work of the federal executive committee on a new party program: “We were never a program party,” decreed the “JUler im Herzen” (Kuban about Wüst) patronizingly, “we were always pragmatists.”
A melancholic of power
How much pragmatism can a party that ended up in the federal political opposition after a resounding election defeat tolerate? When is the time to fill in the “voids in content” (Czaja)? How does Wüst’s radically pragmatic course fit with Kuban’s imploring appeal that the CDU must “learn to walk again”? What pragmatic answer can there be to the host mayor’s concern that the CDU has “sometimes” lost its compass?
So what became of the Germany Day in Münster in 2021, when the Junge Union confronted its parent parties with relentless, utterly unpragmatic self-criticism? A hint of anger from that time appeared in Fulda when Kuban railed against those party grandees “who got us the chancellor candidate,” the unfortunate Herr Laschet.
The question of whether there can be a middle ground between programmatic renewal and pragmatic compromises is likely to become the key question for the new JU chairman. Compared to Kuban, the 31-year-old qualified lawyer from Kreuztal in North Rhine-Westphalia is a melancholic of power. When the others are talking, Johannes Winkel is silent, resting his head in his hands or touching his temples with his fingers. When the previous North Rhine-Westphalian state chairman speaks himself, unlike Kuban, he neither clenches his fists nor rolls up his sleeves.
Winkel seems introverted and smart, but determined at the same time – especially when it comes to energy policy. This caused the liveliest debate at this year’s Germany Day, which otherwise processed its motions with a silent smoothness, as if the young politicians wanted to honor a special offer of the conference hotel: “Spa and Wellness”.
The Climate Union is shipwrecked
The 300 or so delegates quickly voted by voting card for, as the conference presidency wittily called down, “With love to Moscow” and called on the Federal Public Prosecutor General to initiate “proceedings for crimes against humanity and genocide in a German court” against Vladimir Putin. Majorities were just as quickly in favor of a “reduced tax rate for milk and meat substitute products” and against the ban on “refunds in stock trading”.
The eight-page lead motion entitled “Leadership from the front: think security policy holistically and shape it with foresight” pleads for greater visibility of the Bundeswehr, for more public pledges, for more money. The “full equipment of the Bundeswehr” should make the Union a coalition condition in the future.
Of course, no one wanted to engage in the tricky debate as to why the Bundeswehr, as a member of the application committee put it, was “gradually reduced” even under CDU-led federal governments. There the Junge Union is flesh of the flesh of its mothers and closer to power than “to the people” (Kuban).
Winkel successfully fought for application 59 submitted by the Hesse state association – “a strong political sign” – and caused a sensitive defeat for the climate union. Its chairman Wiebke Winter failed with her pleas to “set the focus much more clearly on renewable energies”.
Six German nuclear power plants are to run
The overwhelming majority followed Winkel, not Winter, and decided: The operating times of the six operational German nuclear power plants should be extended beyond 2022. In addition, the federal government should examine whether oil and natural gas fields could be developed in Germany. This is also a result of Fulda: The goals of the young climate union are not communicable in the young union.
And otherwise? What will remain of this Germany Day – besides the sound of beer and water bottles toasting each other, besides the sight of a participant, tired from the early morning party, following Martin Huber’s lecture in the horizontal, besides the sung riddle by Andreas Gabalier after Winkel’s performance, “How do you write Hulapalu?”, next to the popular hit by Calvin Harris after Winkel’s clear choice, 87 percent unopposed, “there’s no stopping us right now”?
Maybe that: Fulda was the Junge Union’s attempt to reassure itself without asking the question of its own self. In the future, Winkel wants to give more weight to reflection and foresight than to demoscopy. Perhaps this is a way of reconciling program and pragmatism.