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The German politician and minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer secured her position as president of the Christian Democratic party CDU last weekend. But at the party congress, the question of who should be a candidate in the next election to succeed Angela Merkel as Chancellor remains open.
When she was put forward by Merkel last year as party chairman, many assumed that Merkel considered her a good candidate for chancellery. But Kramp-Karrenbauer has been under fire since her appointment as party chairman in December last year.
In the CDU, the chairman is traditionally the first person to be considered for the position of candidate-chancellor in the Bundestag elections. The idea that Annegret Kram Karrenbauer might become Merkel's successor in 2021 does not suit iedereen.
Some see her as a Merkel clone, others don't find her strong enough. Within the CDU, the battle rages on how the party can regain voter favor. Is AKK the right chairman to do the job? Since the poor results of the CDU in the European elections, AKK has been under pressure.
She fled forward at the party congress in Leipzig by asking a question of trust. The majority of the party then supported the party chairman. But her position as a potential chancellor candidate is not yet certain, and in any case postponed. Before the next party congress, Kramp-Karrenbauer must show successes to keep other potential candidates at bay.
The party congress rejected a motion that called into question the difficult compromise with the SPD on the basic pension. Stricter conditions have been formulated for this. This can cause a problem with coalition partner SPD, which wants to introduce the basic pension quickly. The Social Democrats have their party congress on December 6.
The traditional parties are no longer doing so well in Germany. The time that CDU and SPD could still support 69.4 % of voters is already fourteen years ago. Now that is less than fifty percent. The SPD has reached a historic low with 14% in recent surveys, and the CDU has also dropped below 30%. Without the CSU, which is firmly in place in Bavaria, the Union would look even more miserable.
In the European elections, the Christian Democrats again had a big blow (28.9%, a loss of 6.4%), and in the state elections in East German Thuringia at the end of October the CDU scored only 21.7 % (a loss of 11 8%).
