The hall floor is laid out with green carpet tracks, the wall above the podium is illuminated by green neon lights. In the foyer, the Women's Union distributes gingerbread hearts with the inscription "Strong Women for the CSU". A few meters further tweets run across the screens in the "Social Media Lounge".
Should anyone in the Munich Olympiahalle or out there have not noticed yet: the CSU wants to become younger, more female and more digital. It focuses on ecology and climate protection as defining topics.
However, parts of their own base still have to be convinced by the agenda. For there is open criticism of the party leadership at the party congress - in spite of all convictions.
"Departure into a new time"
On the tables of 833 voting delegates is a thick booklet with applications. Including the lead application with the full-bodied title "Departure into a new time". It contains no fewer than 75 individual reform plans and will be put to the vote tomorrow, Saturday.
The thick tome is the result of several months of deliberations in various reform commissions and regional events. They want to shape the "CSU for the People's Party of the 21st Century" and renew their "myth," the opus states.
With the party reform CSU boss Markus Söder had commissioned its Secretary-General Markus Blume. He conjures up the change in his speech. "We as CSU are the lawyer of the future," Blume calls into the hall. The Greens, however, had "stopped in the hippie time".
Söder sets himself apart from the AfD
It follows the report of the party chairman. Söder delivers a speech made of tried-and-tested set pieces: Mittelstand as the backbone of Bavaria, priority for technology and research, a commitment to agriculture and the automotive industry.
He recalls the bad situation of the CSU a year ago, the dispute with the sister party. "The style of dealing was not very bourgeois." Söder hands over the AFD, the wool back to the 1930s. "The AfD is the new NPD, and that's why we have to fight it, and it's also railing against the" left-wing reformers. "
The party leader appeals to the delegates: "Society is not waiting for us." Söder: "I want to go ahead, but not alone, with you."
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CSU party congress in Munich: "renew myth"
But immediately after the report of the party chairman there are two critical speeches. The delegate Niklas Stadelmann from the Junge Union Lichtenfels says he can not win the lead request "at the end of the day".
The young politician does not feel sufficiently involved. The quota in the lead application is too rigid an instrument. "I have not seen much, which makes the party younger and more feminine."
Then the JU-man basically. "I think we already have a clear value compass as a Christian Social Union." That is not always visible. "I lack the loyalty to our own beliefs."
"Not so close to the people"
He is followed by former headmaster Willibald Schels of the CSU Gaimersheim near Ingolstadt. "We are not as close to the people, as is always required", the delegate refers to the new party logo. Then criticized the delegate Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer and his "embarrassment" with the toll. "So easy to say, Mr. Scheuer has our blessing, I would not let that go here." He gets loud applause.
Flower must once again on the stage, he defends the party reform. Then follows the election of the party chairman. Söder receives 91.34 percent of the votes cast, only one vote for the unoccupied Weber. In January, Söder had still achieved 87.4 percent, after the surviving power struggle with Horst Seehofer.
The good result before Söder, however, does not mean that everyone agrees with the prescribed renewal. The 140,000 members of the CSU are on average 60 years old, the proportion of women is about 20 percent, also because the Women's Union has its own membership.
Some Christsoziale have the impression that Söder spreads his arms too much towards urban, green voters. As Söder's poll numbers rise, his party stagnates.
There have been party withdrawals, reported on the morning of the congress about Peter Ramsauer in "Deutschlandfunk". "We have to be careful as a people's party that it does not take us here and there out of the curve with such fundamental and rapid changes in content," said Ramsauer.
Binding women's quota
On some CSU local associations may be troubled times: earned party members who are older or male, but mostly both, will have to make way for the boys and women.
According to point 63 of the lead application - "widening the female membership base" - the 40% women's quota, which is already valid at the district and party executive level in the CSU today, should be increased to 50% and extended to the district associations.
The Junge Union only gave up its resistance when it was given pledges. "The party executive will always be a deputy under 40 in the future," it now says under point 61 in the reform program. In addition, in the CSU boards of districts and districts always a member under 35 years to be represented.
But the offspring is not pacified. Among other things, he is working to award the next Union Chancellor candidate by primary ballot. Party leader Söder considers little of such a procedure. For discussion-happy members, the lead proposal promises an annual value congress in order to jointly struggle for the right course. "We want to give all the bourgeois convictions in the party the necessary space," says the lead motion.
For the time being, delegates will go home with another symbol of increased climate awareness. At the end of the congress on Saturday, every delegate should receive a small tree: red beech, hornbeam and blood beech.
Those, so a party spokesman, are "climate-resistant" and would "used in forest conversion."