Election defeat means Merkel’s successor will be chosen in April
GERMANY’S ruling party is to bring forward plans to choose a successor to Angela Merkel after suffering one of its worst ever regional election results at the weekend.
The Christian Democrat party (CDU) will hold a special conference to elect a new leader on April 25 in Berlin, it was announced yesterday.
The winner will lead the party into next year’s general elections, but Mrs Merkel will serve out the rest of her term as chancellor.
The CDU originally planned to vote on a new leader at the regular party conference in December, but brought its plans forward after it came third in regional elections in Hamburg at the weekend, with just 11.2 per cent of the vote.
It was the party’s worst result in a regional election since 1951 – and its second worst of all time. The change in plans for choosing a new leader suggests attempts to agree a back-room deal between the candidates have failed.
Annegret Kramp-karrenbauer, who was groomed to succeed Mrs Merkel but is standing down as party leader following a series of poor election results, held a series of meetings with the leading candidates last week amid rumours a deal was under discussion.
But yesterday she appeared to indicate there will now be an open race to succeed Mrs Merkel. “The declared and potential candidates have made clear to me that they will accept the result of the party conference and will be very much involved in the work of the CDU,” Mrs Kramp-karrenbauer told a press conference in Berlin.
The front-runner in opinion polls is Friedrich Merz, a multimillionaire businessman and long-time rival of Mrs Merkel, who wants to take the party back to its conservative roots.
But he faces a strong challenge from Armin Laschet, the well-connected regional prime minister of North Rhinewestphalia, Germany’s most populous state, who has emerged as the candidate of the party’s Merkellian centrists.
Jens Spahn, the health minister and another conservative, is also expected to run. The only contender to announce his candidacy officially so far is Norbert Röttgen, who was sacked as a minister by Mrs Merkel in 2012 after leading a disastrous regional election campaign.
He is seen as an outsider in the race, but his candidacy appears to have put paid to attempts to agree a back-room deal between the other three.