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Armin Laschet: "That drives everyone into the traffic light"
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
Despite all the commitment to unity, Armin Laschet, one of the candidates for the CDU chairmanship, attacked his rival Norbert Röttgen.
With a view to the upcoming federal election, he had previously expressed himself critical of cooperation with the FDP.
"You cannot rely on a party that sometimes wants to govern and then doesn't," Röttgen had told the Augsburger Allgemeine.
Laschet now countered insulting the FDP as a fundamental mistake.
"That drives everyone into the traffic light." The Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia called Röttgen's statements dangerous.
He himself tries to keep a line with FDP party leader Christian Lindner.
"The moment may come when we need it," said Laschet.
He himself leads a black-yellow coalition in North Rhine-Westphalia.
He prefers a Jamaica alliance with the Greens and the FDP to black and green.
“Because we also need a corrective.
That is why I would like a strong FDP for the federal election. "The CDU must have fundamental debates with the Greens on every topic -" especially at the federal level with many left-wing Greens. "
That is much more difficult than a coalition with the FDP.
Röttgen's statements were also sharply commented on in circles of the FDP leadership.
»Norbert Röttgen wants to lead the Union further to the left.
This makes the role of the FDP as a lawyer for the center even more urgent, "it said to the SPIEGEL.
Röttgen thus proves a "similar instinct for the bourgeois voters" as in the North Rhine-Westphalian state elections in 2012, after the loss of which he was even dismissed as Federal Environment Minister by Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU).
Laschet warned particularly urgently against a traffic light coalition of the Greens, SPD and FDP.
“That is the most difficult thing: a coalition of the SPD, which covers the social, the Greens, and the FDP, which then covers the economic part - what else does the CDU do about it?
That is the great danger for both Baden-Württemberg and the Federal Republic of Germany. "
At the weekend, the successor to party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer will be determined at a digital party conference.
In addition to Laschet and Röttgen, the former parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz will also appear.
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