After the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, leading CDU politicians ruled out a personnel debate about CDU leader and Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz, despite their party's major losses.
Chancellery Minister Nina Warken described the discussions about replacing the CDU leader as wrong. “The government has been elected for four years, the Bundestag has been elected for four years,” said Warken in the ARD morning magazine. A certain stability is also needed now.
Instead, the black-red federal government must speed up its reform course. "People don't yet feel that anything is changing: we have to get faster, we have to get better, and that is rightly a point that people have," admitted the CDU politician.
The Minister of State for Federal-State Relations in the Chancellery, Philipp Amthor, also defended Merz against criticism. Anyone who tries to “give one-dimensional answers” or “focus on individual people” is misunderstanding “the shifts that we are currently having in society,” said Amthor on Deutschlandfunk.
At the same time, questioning the federal government's reform course is "the completely wrong answer to the election results," said the CDU politician. The deeper problem is that necessary reforms have been “failed to take place” over the years. As a result, competitiveness suffered and “social disappointments” and “polarization” arose.
CDU general secretary Franziska Hoppermann and Union parliamentary group leader Thorsten Frei also called for the agreed reforms of the black-red coalition to be implemented quickly. When asked what responsibility the Chancellor had for the result, Frei said that we had to "first analyze why we lost so much support in Saxony-Anhalt."
Merz himself has not yet commented on the results of the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt. In the afternoon, however, he wants to appear before the press together with Saxony-Anhalt's Prime Minister Sven Schulze.
From the ranks of the coalition partner there was again clear criticism of the previous reform course and of Chancellor Merz. In the ARD morning magazine, the parliamentary director of the SPD, Dirk Wiese, said that Merz had also contributed to great uncertainty among voters in Germany with his rhetoric - for example through his statements about "laziness" in relation to employees.
It is now the task of the federal government to take people's concerns seriously, especially with regard to social reforms. “I believe we have to find options in this federal government if we want to secure the social security systems,” said Wiese.
In addition, SPD General Secretary Tim Klüssendorf and deputy chairman Alexander Schweitzer called for changes to the planned pension reform.
The co-chair of the Green Party, Felix Banaszak, also called for the entire democratic political center to take responsibility. Confidence in the state's ability to solve problems is at an all-time low. “No party can say: the others have to take care of it,” said Banaszak, whose party got 8.9 percent in the state election.
Addressing the federal government, the Green Party leader considered it "to be the completely wrong conclusion if the Union now takes this election result with it that we simply have to push these reforms through the German Bundestag even faster."
Meanwhile, AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla also announced offers of talks to the CDU with a view to forming a government in Saxony-Anhalt, but made an appeal to the party. “The CDU has to question itself what and what consequences it is drawing from this disastrous election result,” said Chrupalla in the ARD morning magazine.
The talks should start this week. "That is our goal for now, and I assume that with Ulrich Siegmund we also have a prime minister who will also be elected in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament." What is crucial is that there is a policy change in Saxony-Anhalt.
However, AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund had always rejected a coalition in the run-up to the election and sought a sole government. The CDU had also previously ruled out cooperation with the AfD.
