Friedrich Merz has finally won the CDU party chairmanship, and a power struggle is still raging in the Union for the parliamentary group chairmanship.
A hint from CSU boss Markus Söder could have decided the matter now.
A commentary by Georg Anastasiadis.
Next week, the CDU party congress will elect Friedrich Merz – now also formally – as chairman. The Sauerlander needed three hard attempts to do so. The 66-year-old, on the other hand, is now being given a second, almost equally important office on a silver platter, surprisingly from Munich: CSU boss Markus Söder is likely with his public statement that the CDU chairman has the first right of access to the chair of the joint parliamentary group of the CDU and CSU, have decided the power struggle between Ralph Brinkhaus, who was elected until March, and Friedrich Merz for the role of the Berlin opposition leader.
That's right - the Union, disheveled by the voters, finally needs clear leadership again and has to pool its remaining strengths instead of distributing the little power over too many shoulders. Without the stage of parliament and without the parliamentary group apparatus, Merz cannot formulate the Union's claim to be the reserve chancellor party. But it is not without a certain irony: in 2002 it was CSU leader Edmund Stoiber who decided the dispute between Merkel and Merz over the chairmanship of the parliamentary group after the then Union election defeat - against Merz, who then withdrew from politics, deeply disappointed.
Söder's partisanship is to be understood as an offer of reconciliation to Merz, who was on the Laschet team at the time and with whom there were serious arguments in the federal election campaign.
The CSU boss now wants to draw a line under it, and he garnishes this with the dazzling sentence that the year (of the Union dispute) 2021 must not be repeated.
This is reminiscent of Merkel's famous statement about the migration year 2015. If you like, you can also read a touch of remorse from it.