Free Sundays, more childcare: Merz wants to make the CDU more family

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Friedrich Merz, candidate for the CDU chairmanship

Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa

Friedrich Merz, one of the three applicants for the CDU chairmanship, wants to make the party much more family-friendly if he is elected. »Time off that young mothers and fathers take for their children should no longer be seen as a career kink in their résumé. You have to be recognized like the job, "said Merz of" Bild am Sonntag ". It also needs good childcare everywhere in the professional environment, "also in our party headquarters."

Specifically, Merz promised: »We will agree to abolish the long night meetings and to keep the weekends free as far as possible, especially on Sundays.

We will keep the digital formats.

We have national associations that do not allow digital participation in board meetings.

We will change that. «He is trying» today more than ever to see our world through the eyes of our children «.

Merz said he regretted in retrospect that he had

too little time" for his children.

I would like to enable my younger colleagues to do this in a different way.

Party in "severe crisis"

The former parliamentary group leader Merz had already run for chairmanship twice in vain.

Now he has reapplied alongside the executive head of the Chancellery, Helge Braun, and the CDU external expert Norbert Röttgen.

The three candidates each want to succeed Armin Laschet.

The trio is to present itself to party members next week in a format broadcast live on the Internet.

The preliminary survey of around 400,000 CDU members begins on December 4th.

The final decision on the successor to the CDU chairman Laschet, who has only been in office since January, is to be made by the 1001 delegates at a party congress on January 21 in Hanover.

Merz sees his party in a threatening situation.

Merz told Bild am Sonntag that her character as a people's party was at risk, and that the party was in a “serious crisis”.

“We no longer have opinion leadership on any topic, not even in economic policy.

We no longer have the highest percentage of voters in any age group, not even among those over 60. "

mrc / dpa