CDU Harz district rejects minority government reliant on Left Party support in Saxony-Anhalt

Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) could narrow its options for keeping the far right out of power in Saxony-Anhalt after a local CDU group proposed ruling out a minority government dependent on support from the Left Party after Sunday’s election.

The proposal, first reported by FOCUS on Thursday, came from the CDU’s Harz district association and was co-authored by state lawmaker Alexander Räuscher. It rejects any model that could survive only with the “goodwill, toleration or explicit consent” of the Left Party.

“A model that gives the Left a de facto veto over the entire work of a center-right government is unacceptable to the CDU Harz,” the paper says.

The thinking behind the proposal is that a CDU-led minority government with support of the far left — as is the case in other eastern German states such as Saxony and Thuringia — would give the AfD further ammunition to attack the party.

CDU state premier Sven Schulze, the party’s lead candidate, quickly distanced himself from from the proposal. “That is the opinion of a single party member,” he told German magazine Stern. “No decision has been made on this, and it will not be a topic of discussion in the coming days.”

The document has not yet been adopted, but Räuscher made clear he wants the red line drawn on both sides of the political aisle. “I reject cooperation with the AfD and the Left,” he told FOCUS, warning he would consider seeking the expulsion of CDU members who negotiate with either party.

That could have explosive consequences after Sunday’s election. The AfD is polling around 42 percent in Saxony-Anhalt, against roughly 22 percent for the CDU, while mainstream coalitions are on course to fall short of the votes needed for a majority. If the AfD and the Left together command a blocking majority, forming a government without support from one of them would become impossible.

If other parties cannot unite behind a candidate for state premier, a later parliamentary ballot could open the door to an AfD politician taking the top job, in the event the party doesn’t claim outright victory on Sunday. An AfD premier would be Germany’s first far-right state leader since World War II.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz has ruled out a formal coalition with the Left but left open the potential for minority governments to seek shifting parliamentary majorities.