According to the CDU politician Friedrich Merz, the SPD is "in the last suicidal phase of its existence as a People's Party". He said that at the party congress of the CDU Saxony-Anhalt in Magdeburg, as the "Volksstimme" and the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" report.
The former Union faction leader Merz said: He wonders if the SPD "mentally and intellectually" is still there. "Or let a permanent student who has never made money in his life dance around on his nose?" If the SPD becomes a "self-help group Kevin Kühnert", one must ask oneself how long that could go on.
Despite his drastic choice of words, Merz said the coalition partner's demise was not a source of glee and malice for the Union. Germany would always have gone best if the two major people's parties in the middle had wrestled for the majority.
"Right-wing neo-Nazis"
The CDU Saxony-Anhalt had convened the extraordinary party congress to settle a month-long policy dispute. He aroused himself among other things on a paper of the Harz CDU, which did not want to exclude a cooperation with the AfD.
Merz spoke out against cooperation. "Cooperation with such a party, which not only tolerates right-wing neo-Nazis in their ranks but actively promotes them, is out of the question for the Christian Democratic Union."