The CDU confronts Söder on the issue of the Federal President

The CDU is now openly claiming to name its own candidate for the office of Federal President. So far only one name has been publicly mentioned in the Union: that of the Bavarian state parliament president Ilse Aigner, who is a CSU member.

Now the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ) in Berlin was told by CDU party circles: “The CDU definitely claims to name its own candidate for the office of Federal President.”

This is not yet a rejection of Aigner by the CDU chairman and Chancellor Friedrich Merz. But he obviously doesn't want to let the CSU put him under any further pressure. According to information from the “FAZ”, Merz has not yet made a decision about who he wants to send into the race.

The announcement from the CDU came shortly before the planned speech by CSU chairman and Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder at the CSU party conference in Munich. Although Söder had been clearly told by the CDU that he should hold back on promoting Aigner at the party conference, the CSU chairman announced in an interview with the “Augsburger Allgemeine” on Thursday that he would do exactly that.

Aigner is a “convincing solution”. Söder pointed out that the President of the State Parliament enjoyed “high sympathy and great acceptance” not only in his party, but also among the Social Democrats.

The Union has the right to propose candidates within the coalition. There are two reasons for this: It has more members than the SPD in the Federal Assembly. And the SPD already has Steinmeier – whose party membership is suspended during his term of office – as Federal President, so it is not his turn.

In the latest “Bayerntrend” by the Infratest dimap survey institute, Aigner actually enjoyed high cross-party support for her candidacy: 59 percent believed that she would be a good successor to incumbent Steinmeier, and 22 percent thought she was not a good choice. Aigner had support from supporters of the CSU (87 percent), Free Voters (79 percent), Greens (64 percent) and SPD (60 percent). Only AfD supporters saw things differently; only 24 percent of them thought Aigner was a good federal president.