Gjudging by the fact that today’s CDU leader Friedrich Merz was portrayed as a man from yesterday by the CSU leadership two years ago, he seemed quite fresh and aggressive when he appeared at the CSU party conference in Augsburg. Above all, he has Chancellor Olaf Scholz in his sights, whose “turning point” he describes as “largely a big disappointment”. There has been “not one order, not one tender” for military equipment since the Chancellor’s speech at the end of February.
The CDU and CSU in the federal government are currently working on how to get rid of the traffic light accusation that in 16 years the government had caused the mess in which the country is now stuck. Merz says: “The last 16 years are not the problem, the last 16 weeks are the problem.” All attempts by the Union to better equip the Bundeswehr have failed due to resistance, not least from the Greens. If they talk about the Bundeswehr today “as if they had never spoken otherwise”, then they are “talking about converts”. CSU regional group chief Alexander Dobrindt had spoken similarly – not the only point where you can see that there is good agreement, at least between Merz and Dobrindt.
Merz: “Disrespect stands above this chancellorship”
Merz then turns Scholz’s fetish word “respect” on himself. The Chancellor behaved disrespectfully towards the Bundestag, towards the Federal President, in whose recent speech the members of the government were conspicuous by their absence, towards the members of the Federal Government, the federal states and the neighboring states. “Disrespect stands above this chancellorship,” shouts Merz
At the end of the speech, Söder will say that it is “so nice when CDU people think the same way as CSU people at heart.” . However, that is not quite the case. You notice it on a small scale. For example, Merz mentions his “friend Wolfgang Schäuble”, who, unlike the Federal Chancellor, lived the Franco-German friendship; you have to know that Schäuble is seen by the most important people in the CSU as the one who prevented Söder’s chancellorship. The differences between Merz and Söder can also be seen on a large scale. While Söder said the night before that Russia “must not win” the war in Ukraine, Merz says: “Putin must lose this war and Ukraine must win this war.” Also on the subject of dealing with the new centre-right government in Italy shows differences. While Merz, here in line with EPP boss Manfred Weber, is campaigning not to make Italy a “pariah” and not to presume to judge the result of a democratic election, Söder (and Dobrindt) have recently had a lot more critical of Meloni, Berlusconi and Co.
What still works well for the CSU is criticism of bans and alleged re-education methods, which Merz, here in line with Söder, associates primarily with the Greens. In view of climate change, which Merz has also recognized as a serious problem, it is now “not the hour of the ideologues, but of the engineers”. It is important to throw away bans on thinking, for example when it comes to gas production in Germany. Merz describes the EU’s ban on combustion engines as “obstinate,” and on the subject of extending the lifespan of nuclear power plants, he calls out to the delegates: “The Greens are not willing to go down such a path out of sheer ideology.” If everything is not deceptive, don’t just beat at this point the applause meter is a bit stronger than the previous evening at Söder.