Armin Laschet, the candidate for the presidency of the party of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, gestures as he participates in a debate at the party’s headquarters in Berlin on January 8, 2021.
CHRISTIAN MANG / POOL / AFP) (Photo by CHRISTIAN MANG / POOL / AFP via Getty Images
FRANKFURT – The German ruling party of the CDU on Saturday chose Armin Laschet as its new president, and possibly paved the way for him to replace Angela Merkel as chancellor in this year’s election.
Laschet is currently the prime minister of the German region of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous federal state in the country. He defeated rival Friedrich Merz by 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 is committed to keeping the CDU firmly at the “center of society”. “.
With him as president, the CDU will likely remain the message and focus on more climate change policies and environmental issues. He has a solid Catholic background that gives him the support of Christian party circles.
He is a trained lawyer and also worked as a journalist at the time of German reunification between 1986 and 1991. He looks very liberal and is popular among the immigrant community in his home state.
If he becomes the CDU chancellor candidate in the September elections, he could be open to several coalitions: the sharing of power is a recent tradition in German politics.
He has raised the idea of a government alongside the Liberals, the FDP, in an attempt to gain parts of the business field within the CDU. But he is also considered a natural fit for a coalition with the Greens, as he maintains good relations with the party and favors environmental issues.
But the CDU candidate for chancellor will only be determined in the spring. And it is not certain that the newly elected president will automatically move into the role of Merkel. Markus Söder, the very popular Bavarian Prime Minister, and also Jens Spahn, the current Minister of Health, 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 left her post in February 2020 after a series of communication setbacks made her seen as too weak to lead the chancellery.
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