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BERLIN — Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party of Angela Merkel, will be led by right-winger Friedrich Merz from next year.
Merz, a 66-year-old member of the Bundestag and former MEP, succeeded in his third attempt to secure the party leadership after being defeated by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer in 2018 and Armin Laschet earlier this year.
Laschet announced he would step down in the wake of the party’s general election defeat in September, which ended 16 years of CDU-led government under Merkel.
“We have a mission here in Berlin in the opposition,” Merz said after the result of the vote was announced Friday afternoon. The CDU is the largest opposition party in the Bundestag.
Between December 4 and 16, almost 250,000 of the roughly 400,000 CDU members voted for their preferred party leader, facing a choice between Merz and two more centrist candidates, foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen and Helge Braun, who served as Merkel’s chancellery chief.
Merz won by a very large margin, receiving 62.1 percent of the vote, while Röttgen came in second with 25.8 percent and Braun received 12.1 percent.
The vote must be confirmed by 1,001 delegates at a party conference on January 21 and 22 but that is expected to be a mere formality.
Source: Politico
