Merkel bids farewell to her party leadership with a call for unity

Chancellor Angela Merkel delivers her speech at the CDU virtual congress, this Friday, in Berlin.FILIP SINGER / EFE

The coronavirus crisis constitutes "the hardest test", "the pandemic of the century" that stresses the economy and demands the efforts of many people, Angela Merkel stressed this Friday in her last speech as German Chancellor before her party, the CDU.

The conservative party chooses its successor on Saturday from three candidates on whom Merkel avoided expressing her preferences.

He only said that he trusts that "a team" will be elected and that the 1,001 delegates with the right to vote will make the election "appropriate with the future in mind."

Angela Merkel's party faces a dilemma, the future of which will depend on the formation and the country, but also on Europe.

What's it gonna be?

Renewal?

Turn to the right?

More Merkel but no Merkel?

Conservative party delegates inaugurate with their votes a new era after the powerful leadership that the chancellor has exercised in the last 20 years: as president of the CDU since 2000 and leading the country since 2005. The resignation of Merkel's favorite, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, almost a year ago, cut short the planned transition and opened an unpredictable race for succession.

The Chancellor addressed her party defending that it has acted "responsibly" in the face of the country's great challenges, such as migration or the economic crisis in the euro zone.

After all these challenges, the pandemic now represents a challenge “of unknown dimensions” that requires “sacrifices that we could not have imagined before”.

For leadership, the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state in Germany, Armin Laschet;

foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen and the Chancellor's lawyer and chief critic, Friedrich Merz.

Although Merkel has wanted to remain neutral during the campaign, her preference for Laschet is known, who concurs with the promise of making the health minister, Jens Spahn, vice president of the party, now very popular for his management of the pandemic.

Perhaps that is the "team" that Merkel referred to, or perhaps she was thinking of integrating Röttgen, the other candidate who offers continuity with her ideological line.

Merz, by contrast, would represent a shift to the right and a break with the centrism of the

Merkel era

.

His enmity with her - who took over as head of the party in Parliament in 2002 - would create tensions with the head of the Government.

Super election year in Germany

The election of the new CDU leader inaugurates what Germans call a super election year, with six elections in the federal states and the general elections in September.

And that is the goal that CDU members and delegates have in mind.

The elected will have many ballots to also be the conservative candidate for the Chancellery, so they must weigh their electoral possibilities in addition to their virtues to manage and mark the ideological line of the party.

The election of the president of the CDU also has enormous significance beyond the German borders.

At stake is the legacy of Merkel, a chancellor who in a way has served as the leader of the whole of Europe, first dictating the prescriptions of austerity in the Great Recession of 2008 and then turning the refugee crisis of 2015 into an integration challenge.

The profile of the chosen one will define Germany's relations with Brussels and with each of its neighbors, aware that the head of the largest European economy is more than just a national leader.

"Whoever wins, will have to seek an agreement with the Bavarian Prime Minister, Markus Söder, who is also the head of the brother-party CSU, to decide who will be the next candidate for chancellor," recalls Uwe Jun, professor of Political Science at the University of Trier.

The popularity of Söder, long preferred by conservative voters to be the Chancellor candidate, was clear: he spoke at the opening session of the congress alongside Merkel and the outgoing president, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

“Merz gives the impression that he would not step back in favor of Söder and introduce himself.

Laschet and especially Röttgen have made it clear that they would speak with the CSU leader to choose a candidate, ”Jun adds.

Kramp-Karrenbauer (nicknamed AKK) also used her farewell speech to ask for unity in the party and, like Merkel, assured that the CDU is a party “of the center”.

The outgoing president spoke, at times emotionally, of her resignation to continue leading the formation and to run for the chancellery, which occurred last February after the scandal of the election in the Thuringia regional parliament of a liberal candidate with votes from the far right and the CDU.

The sanitary cordon that Germany maintained with the ultra party was broken for the first time when the regional CDU voted against AKK's orders, and it was overruled.

"It was not a regional issue, it was the soul of our party," he said at the congress.

He felt then "that he no longer had sufficient authority to bring the party out of the crisis unscathed."

A congress without applause or cocktails

Volker Bouffier, Prime Minister of Hesse, said in a previous online meeting with journalists that this time it is especially difficult to predict who will be the winner.

The congress is entirely telematic because of the pandemic.

Speakers address the camera from a set and many delegates see them on a screen in their homes.

Others are in the Messe de Berlin fairgrounds, in a space of 10,000 square meters to respect the distance and with points to do rapid coronavirus tests.

It is thus complicated to take the temperature of the public before the speeches of the candidates, who when the time comes they will cast their vote with a cold click on their computers or tablets.

Nor has the traditional cocktail party been held in which candidates and party heavyweights mingle with each other and with journalists in an environment more conducive to commenting on internal polls.

Prominent leaders of the CDU heated up the vote on Friday by speaking of their preferences directly or indirectly, such as the Prime Minister of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, who warned in another telematic appointment with the media of the "serious mistake" that his party can make if it chooses the wrong candidate, one who, he put for example, thinks of allying himself with the Greens.

Without naming him, I was talking about Norbert Röttgen, who has been against a coalition with the Liberals.

For Kretschmer, the CDU's natural ally is neither the SPD nor the Greens, but the FDP, Christian Lindner's liberal party.

He did not mention Röttgen, undoubtedly the darling of the left, but he did have good words for Laschet and Merz.

Wolfgang Schäuble, speaker of the German parliament, said he would vote for Merz at a meeting with delegates from Baden-Württemberg, according to the DPA news agency.