Berlin. When will the powder keg that Friedrich Merz is sitting on explode? Many CDU politicians asked themselves the question when they left the party headquarters in Berlin on Monday evening. The chairmen of the CDU district associations had been discussing the party's crisis there since midday. At the end there was a long discussion with the Chancellor - but even that could not dispel anger and doubts, as participants reported.
The conference was a response to the humiliating election defeats in the fall. The CDU has almost 330 district associations. They organize the party's base, campaign for it - and above all, they currently have to listen to a lot of frustration with the black-red coalition and the Chancellor.
The meeting between the CDU leadership and the base takes place in the middle of what is probably the party's worst crisis. In September, the CDU in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was thrown out of a state parliament for the first time, at the federal level it was left behind in polls by the AfD, and Merz is more unpopular than any chancellor before him.
Around 160 district chairmen traveled to the capital for the meeting on Monday and experienced an event that was thrown into disarray after General Secretary Franziska Hoppermann's opening speech in the early afternoon. Actually, working groups should first discuss the structure of the CDU, the digitalization of party work and the financial situation.
“We are here in the engine room of Christian Democracy,” is how Hoppermann outlined the event, according to party circles. But many district chairmen wanted one thing above all: to let off steam. So the agenda was adjusted spontaneously to provide an outlet. A discussion followed after Hoppermann's speech. “It was really busy,” said one participant later. The party's frontline fighters took the opportunity to nip any sugarcoating in the bud and to criticize the government and the party headquarters.
The plan of those responsible in the Adenauer House must have been to allow frustration to be released in the afternoon so that there would be no big bang when the party leader appeared in the evening. Merz gave a short speech around 5:30 p.m., after which he took almost two hours for questions and discussion, longer than planned.
Nevertheless, a number of people are said to have left the evening angry and annoyed that they had even made the journey to Berlin. This is how one of them put it. Others reported that although things got heated after Hoppermann's speech in the afternoon, Merz's discussion was civilized.
In his speech, the Chancellor is said to have described the difficult international situation, as it was said in party circles: the conflicts with the USA, the energy crisis, competition from China. All of this creates uncertainty. “We are experiencing social tensions in the country that we have never experienced before.”
The CDU leader also addressed the many disputes in the coalition. At the SPD you are dealing with a partner who has different opinions on major issues. But the intersection is large enough to lead the country in difficult times. When it comes to reforms, we now have to do things that have been left undone for a long time.
The CDU politicians have often heard something like this from their chairman. What was really new in the speech was Merz's announcement that a woman should definitely be Frank-Walter Steinmeier's successor. According to participants, Merz said he would propose a candidate to the party to succeed the Federal President. “I am determined that it has to be a woman.”
However, the search for a successor to the highest state office is no longer a success story for Merz. Even in the highest party leadership, many believe that the Chancellor is not managing the matter well - like so many other things.
But even though the chairman answered everything patiently, even after the discussion some district chairmen could not see a plan as to how the CDU should get out of the crisis. Rather, Merz is said to have stated that he wants to talk next year about where the party should be located and where it stands in terms of content. Next year, perhaps not until November at the next regular party conference?
Does the party leader and chancellor still have so much time? For months, pressure has been growing from within the party into the parliamentary group, all the way up to the party and government leader. After the disaster in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in September, some district chairmen demanded that the conference be brought forward and that consequences be decided: Continue with or without Merz at the top of the party, with or without the SPD in the government coalition?
The federal party put forward organizational reasons and fended off the frustrating meeting - knowing full well that the powerful prime ministers and state chairmen had also called for a change of course, but had called off the discussed coup against Merz. They demanded more say in the federal government's course, but supported Merz - for the time being.
Nevertheless, there are still rumblings under the party blanket. It is clear to everyone: things cannot continue as before. Otherwise, after Baden-Württemberg, Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin, the elections in Saarland and Bremen, but especially in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, will also be lost.
Nervousness is growing in many regional associations. New surveys show that the CDU state associations are also being dragged down by the unpopular black-red coalition and the chancellor. And in April there are two important elections for the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein. Will the Prime Ministers Hendrik Wüst and Daniel Günther, who have so far been confident of their election victories, also become victims of the Rumpel coalition in the federal government?
