The Paper's special contributor Li Yuwei Chen Ruiqin
【Editor's Note】
This article is the 11th article of the column "Sisso European Review" launched by the "European Studies" research team of the Shanghai Institute of Global Governance and Regional Country Studies of Shanghai Chinese University (SISU) in cooperation with the International Department of The Paper. Since the German election, the "traffic light" model of cabinet formation jointly ruled by the Spdnische Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Green Party has become almost a foregone conclusion, while the Coalition Party that lost the election has faced a discussion of accountability and leadership change within the party. The Sisso European Review will present two articles introducing the four political parties and analyzing the future direction of German politics and its foreign policy. Today's article is published about the Union Party.
On 15 October, the German Federal Election Commission announced the official results of the bundestag elections held last month, with the Social Democratic Party receiving 25.7% of the vote, making it the largest party in the Bundestag. On the same day, the SPD, The Greens and the Liberal Democratic Party issued a statement announcing that a preliminary consensus had been reached on a joint cabinet formation, and the SPD's prime ministerial candidate, Scholz, said all three parties hoped to reach an agreement to form a new government by Christmas this year.
On the other side, the coalition party of incumbent German Chancellor Angela Merkel (made up of the CDU and CSU) received 24.1 percent of the vote, the party's dismal achievement since its candidacy in 1949. The Coalition party faces a discussion of accountability within the party and a major change of leadership. On October 16, CDU chairman and prime ministerial candidate Laschet said on the 16th that he was responsible for the CDU's defeat in the German Bundestag elections in September, and that he would soon resign as governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, the core region of the CDU, and said that all the CDU had to do now was to prepare to become an opposition party in the new Bundestag.
In the post-Merkel era, the Union party is likely to become the largest opposition party in the Bundestag, how will the most powerful "old party" in Germany after World War II deal with the many challenges it faces?
Laschet. Pictures of this article People's Vision
No successor to the CDU after a historic defeat?
As a Christian civilizational party that transcends Christian denominational differences, the Christian Democratic Union was founded in 1945. To date, along with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, it has been in power as a Union party for 51 years, with a number of prominent CDU politicians serving as federal chancellors and occupying most of the country at the federal state level for a long time, which has had a profound impact on The history of Germany.
The CDU was the founder of the political system of the Federal Republic of Germany. Germany's first chancellor after World War II, Adenauer, came from the CDU. During his tenure, he adopted a political strategy of integration into the West, consolidating Germany's position in the Western camp. At the same time, Economy Minister Ahad led the monetary reform, achieved rapid economic recovery, established a social market economy system, and created an "economic miracle" of prosperity and development in the 1950s.
In 1966, Ahad took over as CDU chairman, but due to the post-war economic crisis and controversy over economic issues, the CDU was divided with its former ally, the Liberal Democrats. In 1967, the new CDU chairman, Kissinger, led the CDU to cooperate with the Social Democrats for the first time at the federal level to form a grand coalition government.
German politics between 1969 and 1982 was the SPD's highlight moment, and the CDU played the role of opposition in the House of Representatives. It was not until Kohl's election as prime minister in 1982 that the Union Party regained its dominant position, co-ruling with the Liberal Democratic Party and pushing for the reunification of East and West Germany.
However, "unified prime minister" Kohl failed to grasp the pulse of the times and retired, so that he was defeated by the SpDS in the 1998 Bundestag elections, ending a 16-year streak in power by the League Party, and Kohl was criticized for the party's donation scandal. Merkel, then CDU secretary-general, publicly stated that she had distanced herself from Kohl, forcing Kohl to resign as honorary chairman of the CDU. Thus ushered in the Merkel era.
On February 28, 1993, then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl put merkel on his shoulder.
In 2005, Merkel was elected chancellor and led the Union Party to another 16-year run, forming a grand coalition government with the SPD in addition to allying itself with the Liberal Democratic Party during her second term.
In this election, the CDU, which lost Merkel, seemed unsustainable, and the League party won only 24.1% of the vote in this year's federal election, which was not only lower than that of the old rival Social Democratic Party, but also set a record for the lowest vote rate ever. The result has plunged the CDU into a crisis rarely seen in recent years. According to the results of a quick post-Election poll on September 26, 52 percent of 1,084 respondents believed that the main reason for the Coalition's loss of votes was prime ministerial candidate Laschet, while only 18 percent blamed the poor performance on the League's substantive stance and 15 percent cited the lack of unity within the League as the main cause of the loss of votes.
After this historic defeat, the CDU was pushed by pressure from all sides to a fork in the road: to barely maintain the position of the ruling party in a coalition government formed with other parties, or to directly choose the role of the largest opposition party, so as to achieve a renewal of the political programme and party leaders?
Laschet insisted on coalition powers after losing the election, and on October 3 and 5, respectively, launched its first contact negotiations with the Liberal Democratic Party and the Greens. Overall, however, the crisis within the CDU has made the three-party organization the Jamaica Alliance only theoretically possible.
In his speech on 7 October, Laschet, although still not abandoning the possibility of the "Jamaican Alliance", expressed his willingness to give up the position of CDU chairman and will convene a party congress to reorganize the personnel of the party "from the chairman to the presidium to the federal executive committee", hoping that all those who are currently "qualified" to serve as the CDU chairman will reach a consensus, thus alleviating intra-party contradictions and clearing obstacles for the future development of the CDU.
According to the CDU Secretary-General on 11 October, the CDU will elect a new leadership at the end of this year or early next year. In addition to the current Cabinet Ministers Kramp-Karrenbauer and Altmire, who have already announced their withdrawal from the Bundestag, a significant part of the CDU's existing leadership is likely to re-enter the election of the new leadership, and Laschet's potential successors include the current Minister of Health Jens Span, foreign policy expert Norbert Rottgen, economic expert Friedrich Merz, parliamentary caucus leader Ralph Brinkhaus, and SME President Kasten Lynnemann, etc. But none of them have prestige enough to be widely recognized. This means that despite Laschet's desperate efforts to ease the volatility of the personnel change and reach a team resolution, the major adjustments that the CDU is bound to face will still lead to fierce internal disputes.
On October 16, the CDU youth organization Youth League held a congress in Münster, proposing that grassroots party members should directly elect the party chairman, and sharply criticized Laschet for not declaring responsibility immediately after losing the election, and the CSU president Sodel constantly provoking internal disputes within the league party. How to achieve internal personnel and line adjustment as soon as possible and as smoothly as possible, and maintain the right to speak as an opposition party in the political arena where the SPD has the upper hand, will be the biggest problem that the CDU urgently needs to solve in the future.
The situation is not waiting for anyone, and in a new poll on October 17, the CDU's approval rating has fallen to an unprecedented 19%.
CSU: Ambitions to surpass Bavaria have been frustrated again
The Bavarian Christian Social Union, or CSU for short, was founded in 1945. Its predecessor was the Bavarian People's Party, which was separated from the Central Party during the Weimar Republic. The CSU and the sister party CDU have a close political approach, so the two parties reach an alliance agreement, with the CSU developing its organization only in Bavaria as a local party, while the CDU operates in the rest of the German federal states; More than 80% of the time in Germany since the war has been formed by the Union Party as the largest party in Germany, but this year's German election is undoubtedly the winter of the Alliance Party.
Although the CDU and CSU are collectively referred to as the League Party, the CDU still has a relatively dominant position in terms of intra-party weight. Therefore, during the general election, the Coalition Party is often also the CDU to propose the prime minister's candidate, and its votes often determine the electoral situation of the entire Alliance Party.
But looking back at history, the CSU has also achieved several role reversals. In 1974, SPD Prime Minister Brandt was forced to step down due to a spying scandal, and in the 1976 federal election, the Union Party became the largest party in the Bundestag, but the SPD and LDP still formed a coalition government. At one point, CSU President Franz Josef Strauss decided to cancel the alliance policy with CDU through a party congress, but retracted the decision a few weeks later. In the 1980 general election, Strauss was the Union's candidate for prime minister and won the League's internal elections, but the defeat also ended the Bavarian political strongman's federal political ambitions.
The CSU's second reversal of role took place at the beginning of this century. In 1998, "Unified Prime Minister" Kohl stepped down, and the image of the CDU was greatly damaged. The aftermath of this political upheaval influenced the 2002 election. At that time, Merkel took over the power of the CDU as "Kohl's little girl" for a short time, and after deliberation, she ceded the league's candidacy for prime minister to CSU president Stoyber, resulting in the league's narrow defeat to Schroeder's SPD-led SPD.
Looking at the history of the League's selection of candidates for prime minister, it is not difficult to find that although the CSU is only a local political party, there are no shortage of political veterans. Strauss was one of the few strongmen in postwar German politics, who ran the CSU for 27 years (1961-1988), far surpassing the Soviet leader Brezhnev of the same period. He was the first German politician to be received by Chairman Mao Zedong and traveled to the Soviet Union to meet with Gorbachev during the Cold War. The political courage to be able to move so far between the two camps of the East and the West is evident. Stroiber led the Union in 2002 only to lose to the SPD.
The CSU can always play a "cardiotonic agent" in the face of crises in the League party or in the relative instability of the CDU. With Merkel now stepping down, Rashet's lackluster political performance, and divisions within the CDU, past history seems to be repeating itself. It is not difficult to imagine that Soder, who was the chairman of the CSU party at this time, had political ambitions that surpassed Bavaria. But compared with the previous politicians in the party, such as Strauss, Soder's political career is obviously still a little pale. Although Soder has been governor of Bavaria since 2018 and party chairman since 2019, he should also recognize that without the cooperation of the Union party, it would be a distant and almost impossible goal to become the third CSU-backed candidate for chancellorship, or even the first federal chancellor, in Germany's post-war history.
On April 20, 2021, local time, Munich, Germany, the president of the German CSU, Soder, held a press conference.
At present, the CSU is facing a situation of internal and external difficulties. On the one hand, Soder's sneer at Rashet during the general election caused the Alliance party to be estranged during the election; on the other hand, the support of the CSU in bavaria is not optimistic: in the 2018 state elections, the CSU received only 37% of the vote, not only lost an absolute majority, but also recorded the worst election since 1950, and had to form a coalition government with the Liberal Voters Party; in the just-concluded Bundesrat elections, the CSU won only 31.7% of the support in Bavaria. Just higher than the first federal election in 1949.
As a result, Soder's position as governor and party chairman was also shaken. Bavarian deputy governor and economy minister and liberal voters' party chairman Avangel attacked Soder during the election on the grounds of "vaccine skepticism" and "ineffectiveness in fighting the epidemic". Within the CSU, the younger generation's support for Sodel is fading. At the beginning of the epidemic, Soder's fierce anti-epidemic campaign received rave reviews. But with the recurrence of the epidemic and the political ambitions shown by Sodel during the election, young party members in the party have become disgusted with Sodl's "personal show". The Bavarian branch of the Youth League, a youth organization of the Union Party, wrote in its recent analysis of the League's electoral defeat: "Now is the time ... It is time to assemble a new team of action behind our powerful leader, Soder, to convincingly embody the character of the All People's Party. However, in the resolution adopted by the Youth League Congress by a large majority, words such as "leading figure Sodel" in the report were deleted.
Soder should indeed reflect on his actions, which he played more as an outsider than a member of the League party in this election, and this apparently personally motivated behavior did not benefit him. Nor does the CSU naturally fill the void left by Merkel. While there have been no voices within the CSU party calling on the party leadership to take responsibility for the election defeat, the CSU's influence in the state has been greatly reduced. For Soder, instead of competing at the federal level, it is better to consolidate his ticket position in the state so as not to get lost.
(The author is a 2021 master's student of the "European Civilization Studies" special graduate class of the Shanghai Institute of Global Governance and Regional State Studies, Shanghai University of Foreign Chinese)
Editor-in-Charge: Zhu Zhengyong
Proofreader: Yan Zhang