German conservative chancellor hopefuls show face at party conference
Friedrich Merz was re-elected as leader of Germany’s conservative CDU on Monday, but the party’s annual conference showed that it remains uncertain whether Merz will ultimately win the chancellorship.
The conservative CDU is well on its way to snatching the chancellorship from the ruling centre-left SPD in the 2025 national elections.
The party currently leads German opinion polls with around 30% support, ahead of the far-right AfD.
With a commanding 15% lead over the SPD in the polls, CDU leader Friedrich Merz was already dubbed the “future chancellor” on stage at the party’s ongoing conference on Monday.
However, Merz’s own party rivals for the chancellorship will use their appearances at the conference to show face, as the party will decide separately who will take on Olaf Scholz after several regional elections in the autumn.
“We will decide this together, exactly when we agreed to decide this, namely after the regional parliamentary elections [in Eastern Germany],” Hendrik Wüst, the CDU prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, told ARD on Sunday.
An outspokenly centrist regional leader, Wüst is seen as a potential challenger to Merz, although he has not officially announced such intentions.
Yet Merz, who represents a more conservative shift after the centrist course of former leader Angela Merkel and her successors, remains the most likely candidate by virtue of his position.
German CDU to break with Merkel era on party congress
The German conservative CDU will come together for a three-day party congress on Monday to lay the foundation for their new policy positions in a post-Merkel era and kick off their European election campaign.
“If Friedrich Merz wants to be the Union’s candidate for the chancellery, he will become,” said Katrin Prien, one of the CDU’s deputy leaders, ahead of the conference.
Doubts remain
But Merz’s record remains ambiguous. On the one hand, the party has bounced back from its post-Merkel slump in the 2021 national elections under Merz’s watch.
On the other hand, Merz has raised eyebrows with a string of gaffes. Last summer, the CDU slumped to 26% in the polls after Merz was accused of suggesting in an interview that cooperation with the far right at the local level was acceptable – a taboo subject in Germany.
The conference also showed that doubts remain: While Merz was re-elected as CDU leader, as expected, he scored a mediocre 90% – 4% less than when he was elected in 2022.
Overall, only 15% of supporters of the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, consider him the best candidate for the top job, according to a Politbarometer poll from March.
They prefer Markus Söder (34%), the CSU prime minister of Bavaria, and Wüst (29%), as do German voters in general, according to the poll.
Söder benefits from being seen as approachable and from having his stronghold in Bavaria, Germany’s second-most populous regional state. He will address the conference on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Merz and Wüst used their conference speeches on Monday to claim the centre ground, despite the former’s conservative reputation, hinting at where the race for the candidacy will be decided.
Merz attacked the far-right AfD party and extremists, including radical Islamists, more generall while championing social cohesion.
Road to the chancellery: German conservatives battle for top position
The months ahead could finally see a frontrunner emerge to lead the conservative CDU/CSU in the German general election of 2025, as Friedrich Merz, who currently spearheads the opposition, comes under increasing pressure from his regional contenders.
“Community and social cohesion must be [lived] from within a society. (…) And that is only possible from the political centre and not from the margins,” he told the delegates.
Wüst also stressed that “the greatest service we can do to Germany and Europe is to remain the people’s party of the centre.”
(Nick Alipour | Euractiv.de, edited by Oliver Noyan)