Three years after its crushing defeat in the 2021 legislative elections, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is determined to return to power in 2025. To prepare for this reconquest, its 63e congress, organized in Berlin from Monday May 6 to Wednesday May 8, was of particular importance: a little over a year before the next elections, this meeting was to show that the great German right-wing party, dominated for two decades by Angela Merkel, took advantage of her years of opposition to rebuild around a new leader and a new project.
On both counts, his conference was a success. On Monday, Friedrich Merz was reappointed president of the CDU with 89.8% of the vote. Certainly, observers did not fail to point out that he had done better (95.3%) during his first election at the head of the party, in January 2022. But more than his score, it is the very fact that Mr. Merz was re-elected which is in itself an event: since the departure of Mr.me Merkel from the presidency of the CDU, at the end of 2018, neither of her two successors – Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer then Armin Laschet – had even been able to run for a second term as they were contested internally.
Thanks to this re-election by a very large majority, Mr. Merz is well placed to be nominated as a candidate for chancellor, a question which must be resolved after the regional elections scheduled for September in three former Länder of East Germany (Saxony). , Thuringia and Brandenburg). To do this, however, he still has two obstacles to overcome: that no one in his party stands in his way, and that the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU’s ally in Bavaria, stands put it behind him.
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Given the way the congress took place, Mr. Merz can be relatively reassured on these two points. Within the CDU, its most serious potential rival, Hendrik Wüst, minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state in Germany, holding a less right-wing line, has become extremely discreet.
As for the CSU, its president, Markus Söder, wanted to show that he did not represent a threat. “Of course the president of the CDU is the favorite [pour être le candidat commun des deux partis à la chancellerie] »assured the Bavarian leader on Tuesday during the CDU congress. “It’s not me who will prevent us from winning in 2025”, he added. A way of saying that he will not challenge the legitimacy of Mr. Merz to be a candidate for the chancellorship, unlike what he did in 2021 by trying to impose himself against the president of the CDU at the time, Mr. Laschet.
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