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Karin Prien (in September in Berlin): "I don't know any woman who wants to apply for party chairmanship either"
Photo: Christoph Soeder / dpa
In view of the few women at the top of the CDU, Schleswig-Holstein's Minister of Education, Karin Prien, supports demands for a quota.
»The sober reality is: We won't make it without a quota.
I also don't know any woman who wants to apply for the party chairmanship now, "said Prien to the" Tagesspiegel am Sonntag ".
In the future, however, the CDU will need a team of women and men at the top who trust each other.
"And the women are not allowed to be just a set."
A real quota for women has always been rejected in the CDU.
"The sometimes serious, sometimes flimsy argument was: It's about performance and not about gender," said Prien.
At the same time, however, the party has no problems actually cultivating regional proportional representation.
The CDU leadership agreed last year that a quota of women of up to 50 percent should gradually be introduced by 2025, starting with board elections at district level.
The necessary approval of the CDU party congress is still pending.
At the Young Union's Germany Day in Münster, Jens Spahn, who showed ambitions for a leadership role in the CDU, asked women in the party to apply for leadership positions.
Prien described the situation of the CDU as difficult after the defeat in the federal election.
"We are a party in unrest and upheaval," she said.
Since Angela Merkel's withdrawal from the party leadership in 2018, the question of succession has not been properly resolved and has "pursued a destructive navel-gazing for far too long."
In the party there is "no longer any sensorium for what is thought in the middle of society."
Prien expressed sharp criticism of CSU boss Markus Söder, whom she certified complicit in the poor election result of the Union.
The Bavarian Prime Minister had contributed to the fact that the Union »did not give a closed and unsympathetic impression«.
Söder's behavior after the federal election also feeds into the "doubts about his suitability that were already present when the candidates for chancellor were selected."
In April, Söder had an open power struggle with CDU leader Armin Laschet over the candidacy for chancellor.
During the election campaign, Söder had repeatedly poked against Laschet.
wit / dpa / AFP