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NRW Prime Minister Armin Laschet
Photo: ADAM BERRY / POOL / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
Armin Laschet spoke out against the planned CDU election party conference at the beginning of December.
What parties expect from the citizens, they have to do themselves: reduce contacts wherever possible.
"This party conference is not absolutely necessary now, it can be postponed," said the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia of "Welt am Sonntag".
Laschet is quoted as saying that all pending questions could also be decided after the winter.
"We must now focus all our strength, energy and efforts on combating the pandemic. The people in Germany have less than ever an understanding of the fact that parties are now dealing with themselves."
Laschet competes for the chair with the economic politician Friedrich Merz and the foreign politician Norbert Röttgen.
Merz definitely wants the party conference to take place.
"We have to let it take place, despite Corona - and we shouldn't allow the comparison to be made between the Volksfest, Oktoberfest and football game," he said on Thursday evening at a CDU event in Hamburg.
The CDU leadership wants to decide on the party congress on Monday.
It is considered to spread the party conference over several locations, with mutual connection via video.
According to dpa information, the model could be a corresponding planning for the Lower Saxony CDU state party conference on November 7th.
According to "WamS" information, CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak wants to present a corresponding concept to the committees on Monday, which was examined and approved by in-house lawyers of the CDU and experts from the Interior Ministry.
The CDU would not meet with 1001 delegates in Stuttgart as previously planned, but with 100 to 200 delegates each in eight to ten halls in Germany.
The speeches of the candidates would be broadcast everywhere, the counting would take place in each hall under notarial supervision.
Saarland's Prime Minister Tobias Hans advocated this variant in the "WamS" and declared: "Postponing the party congress into the spring of next year would be the worse alternative."
The Union parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, Ralph Brinkhaus, said that as long as the number of new infections continues to rise at a high level, a party congress is unthinkable.
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as / dpa