DThe Union of Values has cleared the way for the founding of a party planned by its leader Hans-Georg Maaßen. A majority of members voted in favor of it on Saturday in Erfurt, a spokesman said. Maaßen was given the mandate to “launch the establishment of a conservative-liberal party” under the name Union of Values, it said on the association’s website. The party will be founded as soon as possible so that participation in the state elections in September in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg is possible.
Maaßen, who was President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution until November 2018, announced the prospect of founding a party at the beginning of January. The CDU federal executive board has decided to expel Maaßen from the party and to withdraw his membership rights. However, a district party court rejected this.
According to its own information, the Union of Values has 4,000 members. It was founded in 2017 and saw itself as a gathering place for Union supporters who found the course of then CDU leader Angela Merkel not conservative enough. On its website it recently described itself as a “conservative grassroots movement within the CDU/CSU”.
“We are Union 1.0”
According to the Union of Values, in his keynote speech to the members on Saturday, Maaßen referred to the CDU's “continued slide into the left-green camp” under the new chairman Friederich Merz. “We are Union 1.0,” said Maaßen.
The CDU chairman Merz had already announced before the Erfurt meeting of the Union of Values that the CDU wanted to burn bridges with this association. He pointed out that simultaneous membership in the CDU, which was previously very common there, would then no longer be possible under the current rules. If the party is not founded, he will apply for a resolution of incompatibility with the union of values, Merz said about a week ago. In this case, CDU members could no longer be members of the Union of Values.
The CDU member of the Bundestag Paul Ziemiak said that he saw no danger for the CDU and CSU in the planned party founding. “Such populist movements are competition for other populist movements and parties and not for a centrist party,” said the general secretary of the North Rhine-Westphalia CDU on Saturday to the German Press Agency on the sidelines of the NRW CDU’s New Year’s reception. It is clear that membership in competing parties is not possible. “The Union of Values was never part of the CDU. It's not her. It won’t be in the future either.”
According to research by the Correctiv network, two members of the Union of Values were present at the meeting with right-wing extremists in Potsdam in November, where plans for the mass expulsion of people with a migrant background and their supporters were discussed.
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