“It’s not the last 16 years that are the problem, the last 16 weeks are the problem,” said Merz.
(Photo: IMAGO/Chris Emil Janssen)
augsburg With a sweeping attack on the federal government, CDU leader Friedrich Merz gave the Union optimism for next year’s elections. “We are unbeatable when we stick together,” said Merz on Saturday in his more than one-hour speech at the CSU party conference in Augsburg.
The CDU and CSU should therefore go into the election year together and with confidence. In 2023, the state parliaments in Bremen, Hesse and Bavaria will be re-elected on a regular basis.
The Union also needs a clear compass in order to inspire people. “Conservative, liberal and social, these are the three roots of our party,” emphasized Merz. The people in the country were waiting for a clear position from the CDU and CSU.
Looking back on the Union’s defeat in the 2021 federal election, he warned of internal disputes. The Union lost “not because the others were so good, but because we were so bad”. This must not be repeated.
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“Such an annus horribilis that will not be repeated between the CDU and CSU.” At the same time, Merz warned the CDU and CSU against problematizing the reign of former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU). “It’s not the last 16 years that’s the problem, it’s the last 16 weeks that’s the problem.”
At the same time, it is crucial that the Union gives people answers to the pressing questions, and Merz explicitly included climate change in this. Here, too, the Union “must be at the top. We don’t need anyone out there to give us any tutoring on the country’s energy supply.”
Sharp criticism of the traffic light government in all policy areas
SPD, Greens and FDP gave Merz a disastrous testimony of their government work. The decision to only run the nuclear power plants until April 2023 makes Germany “ridiculous all over the world”. Anyone who prefers to use oil and coal instead of nuclear power has lost all credibility for being allowed to talk about climate change at all.
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However, the Union should not only criticize, it must also propose its own solutions – for example to save climate-damaging carbon dioxide (CO2), said Merz. In contrast to the traffic light, however, it should not be about further regulations, re-education or bans. “In this country we have to test and take seriously every technology that might be able to solve these problems of mankind.” It is not the hour of the ideologues, but the hour of the engineers.
The traffic light also fails in all other policy areas, according to Merz. He cited migration, economic, health and drug policies as examples. With regard to the introduction of citizen income, Merz emphasized that this was “the SPD’s only coping with trauma” because in 2005 it “did the right thing for once in its history” with the Hartz IV reform.
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Merz was particularly harsh with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). “We have never had a chancellor in Germany who treated his coalition partners with such disrespect, treated the institutions of our state with such disrespect, treated our neighbors with such disrespect, treated our international partners around the world with such disrespect. Even Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is not shown enough respect.
With a view to Scholz’s upcoming trip to China, Merz warned of growing dependence on Germany. There are rightly complaints about being too dependent on Russia, but with Chinese investments such as in the Port of Hamburg, new dependencies are being steered with open eyes.
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