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Deputy CDU chairwoman Karin Prien
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Marcus Brandt / dpa
Deputy CDU federal chairwoman Karin Prien demands that her party declare membership in the Union of Values incompatible with CDU membership.
Prien is thus reacting to the election of the controversial former President for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, as the new head of the right-wing conservative association.
The "Union of Values" is "an association clearly outside the CDU, which presumes to want to shift the discourse within the CDU clearly to the right, towards the AfD," said Prien of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung".
Maassen's election as chairman of the "Union of Values" is "after a large number of lapses, the final proof that membership in this group does not fit with Christian Democratic values".
She therefore also considers an incompatibility decision by the CDU against this group to be "inevitable," said Prien.
"Clear and credible demarcation to the far right"
The CDU is "the home of the conservatives and wants and must also remain a home for conservative members and voters - all the more important is the clear and credible demarcation to the right," emphasized the CDU politician.
Maassen was elected chairman of the "Union of Values" at a general meeting on Saturday with 95 percent of the votes.
From 2012 to 2018 he was President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Maassen had to vacate the post after questioning right-wing extremist riots in Chemnitz.
In 2021 he failed in the federal elections as a direct candidate for the CDU in Thuringia.
The »Values Union« founded in 2017 sees itself as a group of conservative Christian Democrats.
She argues that the CDU, under the then party leader Angela Merkel, had shifted too far to the left and had to take more conservative positions again.
It operates as a registered association and is not one of the official party organizations.
According to the group, it has around 4,000 members.
mrc/AFP
