New Secretary General: Carsten Linnemann (left) is to follow Mario Czaja (right).
(Photo: IMAGO/Future Image)
Berlin CDU leader Friedrich Merz is replacing his general secretary Mario Czaja after a year and a half. Both had “today mutually agreed to end their cooperation at the top of the party,” said the CDU in Berlin on Tuesday. The successor should therefore be the member of the Bundestag and CDU party vice president Carsten Linnemann.
It is now up to the 45-year-old Linnemann, who has previously worked as head of the CDU program and policy commission and is considered a confidante of Merz, to profile the party in competition with the traffic light coalition and the AfD.
Party leader Merz wants to target the Greens in particular. “We disagree with the Greens in the federal government, not just in detail, but in principle when it comes to economic policy, energy policy and climate policy,” Merz told the Foreign Press Association in Berlin on Tuesday. “That’s why I said that: We have to deal with the Greens in Germany a little harder and a little clearer. They are the ones currently responsible for this core area of federal policy.”
In the debate about the consequences of the AfD soaring in the polls, Merz had described the Greens as the “main opponent” of the Union “in this federal government”.
The statement is also controversial within the party. The CDU governs in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein with the Greens as a junior partner, in Baden-Württemberg the Union is the smaller coalition partner in a green-black alliance. In Brandenburg and Saxony, the two parties also rule together – each in three-party coalitions with the SPD.
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Merz now said: “We do indeed govern very well with the Greens in some federal states, but that is state politics. We are discussing federal policy here, and federal policy is above all economic policy, energy policy, climate policy.” When asked who he wanted to govern with after the next federal election, the CDU politician replied: “I am not conducting a coalition discussion at the moment either. We have factual discussions with the coalition and against the coalition.” The Union can “not only treat these issues differently because we may one day go into a coalition with the Greens”.
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