The candidate for the presidency of the party of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, Armin Laschet, makes gestures while participating in a discussion at the party headquarters in Berlin on January 8, 2021.
CHRISTIAN MANG / POOL / AFP) (Photo by CHRISTIAN MANG / POOL / AFP by Getty Images
FRANKFURT – The ruling German CDU party elected Armin Laschet as its new president on Saturday, likely paving the way for him to replace Angela Merkel as chancellor in this year’s election.
Laschet is currently the prime minister of Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia region, the most populous federal state in the country. He defeated rival Friedrich Merz 521 to 466 in a vote that was forced online due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Born in 1961, he was first elected to the Bundestag (German Parliament) in 1994, and his election is seen as a continuation of Merkel’s policies, as she pledged to keep the CDU firmly in the “middle of society”.
With him as president, the CDU is likely to stay on the message and focus on more climate change policies and environmental issues. He has a strong Catholic background that brings him support from Christian circles within the party.
He is a trained lawyer and also worked as a journalist at the time of German reunification between 1986 and 1991. He is seen as very liberal and popular with the immigrant community in his home state.
If he becomes the CDU candidate for chancellor in the September elections, he could be open to various coalitions – power-sharing is somewhat a recent tradition in German politics.
He launched the idea of a government alongside the Liberals, FDP, in an attempt to win parts of the business camp within the CDU. But he is also seen as a natural fit for a coalition with the Greens, as he has good relations with the party and favors environmental issues.
But the CDU candidate for chancellor will only be set in the spring. And it is not certain that the newly elected president will automatically take over as Merkel. Markus Söder, the very popular Bavarian prime minister, and Jens Spahn, the current health minister, can also join the race to lead Europe’s largest economy.
Merkel resigned as leader of the CDU in 2018, and her replacement, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, resigned in February 2020, after a series of communication inconveniences exposed her as too weak to lead the chancellery.
This is breaking news, please come back later for more.