Armin Laschet: Moderate and Merkel loyalist
Armin Laschet, the new head of Germany’s conservative CDU party, is a sworn European and defender of multiculturalism who has promised to continue the centrist course of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The affable 59-year-old was elected as head of the CDU on Saturday, beating corporate lawyer Friedrich Merz and foreign affairs expert Norbert Roettgen.
The CDU chairman traditionally leads the party and its CSU Bavarian sister party to the polls, meaning Laschet is in with a fighting chance of becoming Germany’s next chancellor.
A soft-spoken political moderate with a reputation for pragmatism, Laschet is currently the leader of Germany’s most populous state of North Rhine-westphalia.
He is a sworn Merkel loyalist who famously stuck by the chancellor in 2015, when Germany left its borders open to hundreds of thousands of migrants from Syria and other hotspots.
If anything, he is seen as even more pro-migration than Merkel, celebrating diversity as a economic and social boon to his state. During his campaign to head the CDU, he positioned himself as the Merkel continuity candidate, telling Stern magazine that “a break with Angela Merkel would send exactly the wrong signal”.
Laschet emerged as an early favourite when the race to head the party was thrown open last year after the surprise resignation of Annegret Kramp-karrenbauer.
But his path to the top was anything but smooth, with critics accusing him of flip-flopping and poor leadership over his handling of the pandemic in North Rhine-westphalia. In the spring, Laschet pushed aggressively for the loosening of restrictions to curb the spread of the virus — only to backtrack after a huge outbreak at a slaughterhouse. He also sparked a row when he appeared to blame eastern Europeans for importing new coronavirus cases to Germany.
THE AFFABLE 59-YEAR-OLD WAS ELECTED AS HEAD OF THE CDU ON SATURDAY