friedrich Merz has only reserved the year 2023 for substantive debates. The draft of the new basic program should be available in September. The debates on this are part of the catching-up process. The aim is to update the program from 2007 and to work out at least ten points that will make the CDU more different from all other parties and thus leave the Angela Merkel mainstream behind. Merz calls his goal “ambitious”; the CDU met in Pforzheim on Thursday evening for the first regional conference to evaluate working group meetings.
Among the guests are the former Prime Ministers of Baden-Württemberg, Erwin Teufel and Stefan Mappus, as well as Peter Müller from Saarland. The approximately 500 members come from Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and of course Baden-Württemberg. The hall seats 1000 guests, so with 500 members the regional conference is not exactly overbooked. Most of the members who came have passed their 50th birthday. “We won’t be able to win these elections if we don’t know where our basic beliefs are,” says Merz. Carsten Linnemann, the deputy CDU chairman, said at the opening in the Pforzheim Congress Center that the CDU needed a new basic melody and clear points of distinction.
The CDU was never a programmatic party, it is always geared towards pragmatic governance, and it will no longer become a programmatic party, but in view of completely new domestic and global political challenges, it urgently needs the new program. Of course, the discussion process also serves to mobilize and prepare for the election campaign, with the aim of finally overcoming the depressive mood after the election defeat in 2021. This is one of the reasons why the Pforzheim conference is more of a mixture of party congress, election campaign and working group meeting for self-assurance.
At least as ambitious as the Greens
The members are asked about the values of the CDU and the major challenges, they type their answers into their smartphones and the word clouds then contain the terms that are traditionally associated with the CDU anyway: Christian image of man, subsidiarity, charity, Europe. And in the challenges, the words “migration” and (slightly smaller) “climate protection” are on the screen and thus the focus of the party’s interest. The MPs Andreas Jung (for sustainability), Ronja Kemmer (for digitization), Daniel Caspary (for security) and the Baden-Württemberg Minister for Economic Affairs Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut (for prosperity) will be interviewed on stage. When Linnemann asked what the new program should stand for, which roots of the CDU it should work out, Kenner said the CDU had to be “brave and innovative”. Caspary replied that one had to define what image of Germany and Europe the CDU wanted to have . The future program, says Jung, must not only contain individual demands, it must contain a “social picture”.
In his speech and in the subsequent discussion, Friedrich Merz manages to get specific: He will not adopt a program that does not contain very concrete steps to achieve the climate protection goals. “I can even imagine that with modern technology we could manage to be faster than we discussed at world climate conferences,” says Merz, promising to be at least as ambitious in climate protection as the Greens. The program will certainly also include a proposal for employee capital formation for old-age security. In addition, Merz announces that the system of flat rates per case for billing hospital services has become obsolete and needs to be reformed.
In a large number of statements made by CDU members, there is clear dissatisfaction with the public broadcasting system and fear of freedom of expression being restricted by the dominance of left-wing parties.
At the end, after three hours, Linnemann – as deputy CDU chairman and head of the policy commission – summarizes the debate again, the new CDU program must contain two summarizing pages: “On the one hand our principles must be on the On the other hand, the five to ten demands that set us apart from the others.” Then he adds another sentence: “If that succeeds, it will be the foundation for the way back to the Chancellery.” Talking about principles in 2023, 2024 dedicating yourself to the local and European elections, appointing the Federal Chancellor again in 2025 – that is the timetable into which the current regional conferences are fitted.
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