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CDU and Union faction leader Merz (in the Adenauer House in Berlin): It's about credibility
Photo: MICHELE TANTUSSI / REUTERS
For the former Friedrich Merz, the tones he struck at party headquarters last Monday would have been unusual.
Because in the past, Merz was once the personification of the CDU economic wing.
But since he's party leader, Merz has been working on his image, preferring to try more socially acceptable statements.
And so, when the CDU's new Charter of Basic Values was discussed in Berlin's Konrad-Adenauer-Haus on Monday, Merz was not the business friend - he was talking about social policy.
In his speech, Merz complained that the response to socio-political challenges such as demographic change had been neglected for too long.
The work on the new basic program is also about the future of the social security systems.
“This is probably the greatest intellectual challenge we all face in German domestic politics,” he calls into the microphone.
Those present applaud, "bravo" someone in the crowd calls out.
Only: During the first practical test, which is scheduled for the end of the parliamentary week in the Bundestag, the newly discovered social conscience of the Union seems to be taking a back seat.
When the legislative proposal by the traffic light factions to increase the minimum wage to twelve euros is voted on Friday morning, the deputies of the CDU and CSU want to abstain.
And this despite the fact that leading Union politicians had previously publicly advocated raising the wage floor accordingly.
So far, 9.82 euros apply, on July 1st there will be an increase to 10.45 euros anyway.
The difficult relationship with the minimum wage
Instead of voting for the traffic light application, the Union MPs presented their own application: In it they welcome the increase in the minimum wage to twelve euros.
But the way the traffic light wants to go there doesn't suit them.
The Union and the minimum wage - that has always been a complicated story.
For many years, the CDU and CSU had resisted such an instrument, primarily for regulatory reasons, and referred to the responsibility of the collective bargaining partners.
Eventually, however, the Union, headed by Chancellor Angela Merkel, gave in to the pressure of its coalition partner at the time, the SPD, so that a minimum wage of initially EUR 8.50 was introduced on January 1, 2015.
And while the SPD called for the lower wage limit to be raised to twelve euros in the last federal election campaign, the Union opposed it.
Since the Union gossip in the federal elections, however, a lot has changed in the sister parties, including the view of labor and social policy - and that, although with Merz someone was elected CDU chairman and head of the Union parliamentary group, who just the economic wing represented his party.
In any case, the so-called Cologne Declaration, which was passed by the presidiums of the CDU and CSU before the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, said: Due to the current developments, it was “right that the minimum wage should be increased in this time of inflation”.
And the old and probably new Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst, even explicitly advocated an increase to twelve euros.
process of self-discovery
The workers' groups of the Union parties did the same. In mid-May, the head of the CSU state group, Alexander Dobrindt, also took the same position and recommended that his parliamentary group approve the corresponding traffic light law.
Principles or not, something else cannot be communicated in these times, he argues.
Dobrindt is CSU boss Markus Söder's liaison to Berlin, so it was clear at that moment: The Bavarian Prime Minister is also in favor of approval.
But then, so it is heard, the economic politicians of the CDU went on the battlement.
And faction leader Merz came under considerable pressure from his biggest fans.
The reason why the minimum wage is so relevant is that it falls in the middle of the Christian Democratic process of self-discovery.
Work on the new basic program has just begun, only the preamble has been written so far.
However, it already states that the CDU is "Christian-social" and that they want to "balance" personal responsibility and the welfare state.
The party wants to give itself a new coat of paint, preferably one that no longer primarily pleases the economy.
As a party and as a society, we urgently need to pay more attention to social issues," said General Secretary Mario Czaja in a recent interview with the "taz".
No increase without reform
"We can't just make politics for the top 60 percent," says CDU MP Kai Whittaker.
He works on the new basic program in the »Social Security« group.
Like many social politicians in his party, Whittaker has pointed out in the past that the CDU must give social issues more space.
So far, however, this has often fallen on deaf ears.
"Finding intra-party compromises on social policy issues has often been very difficult in recent years," says Whittaker.
Now the new basic program should find compromises that fill the socio-political gaps.
In the vote on the minimum wage, however, the Bundestag wants to hold back.
At the beginning of the week, the Union parliamentary group held a decisive meeting on the minimum wage issue: In a round with parliamentary group leader Merz and regional group leader Dobrindt, it was finally agreed to abstain from the plenum on Friday.
In this round there was unanimity.
"A political increase in the minimum wage without reforming the responsible commission does not go far enough," explains the chairman of the workers' group of the Union faction, Axel Knoerig, on the decision.
Above all, the Commission must adjust the minimum wage more often than every two years.
"Otherwise we'll have the same problems again in the future."
However, when Dobrindt then announced this position in the meeting of the CSU deputies, the surprise was great, it is reported.
And still, not everyone is happy with the decision, right down to the leadership of the Christian Socialists.
Volker Ullrich, head of the CSU employee wing, says: "I could have imagined approval in the plenum." A view that is reportedly shared by some of the CDU MPs.
Complexity instead of simple promises
How an opposition faction behaves on an issue where their votes are not needed - as in this case - is of course really irrelevant.
But the minimum wage is about an important substantive positioning - and also about the credibility of the CDU and CSU.
This is one of the reasons why the grumbling is so clearly audible in parts of the group.
What if the SPD, which identified the demand for a twelve-euro minimum wage as one of its hits in the last federal election campaign, turns things around in the future?
According to the motto: We, the Social Democrats, pushed through the twelve euros - the Union, on the other hand, once again did not dare.
Because in the end abstention is both: not a no, but also not a yes.
The fact that the Union is particularly bothered by the way to the twelve euros past the minimum wage commission is then at most in the small print.
Or as the social politician Whittaker puts it: In the government, the Union has actually advanced important social policy projects, in the area of pensions, for example.
"But such successes always went home with the SPD." The Union should now have something similar: Although they are in favor of raising the minimum wage - the Union will not be able to book this as a success in itself.
