The CDU leadership is setting the course to get rid of its member Maassen - it will probably be a long struggle.
The news ticker.
Update from February 13, 7:32 p.m .:
The former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, complained about an “unfair” game after the decision to throw him out of the CDU.
The voters and party members understand “despite the agitation that is sometimes being carried out in the media” that “me and the union of values are being played unfairly,” Maassen explained on Monday evening.
It is clear “that reasons for excluding a party are constructed with absurd arguments”.
Ultimately, it's not about him;
in truth, it should be prevented "that the moderates and conservatives in the CDU regain influence and achieve a course correction in the party".
In view of "the unjustified, defamatory and, above all, unprovable attacks", he and the union of values, of which Maaßen is now chairman, are "relaxed and unemotional" about the exclusion process, according to a press release from the right-wing conservative association.
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Hans Georg Maassen
© Martin Schutt/dpa
Update from February 13, 1:13 p.m
.: Ex-President for the Protection of the Constitution Hans-Georg Maassen should be excluded from the CDU.
The federal executive board has unanimously decided to initiate a procedure to exclude the party, said the CDU chairman Friedrich Merz in Berlin.
In addition, his membership rights had already been withdrawn “with immediate effect”.
The district party court in Erfurt must now decide on the party exclusion, said Merz.
The CDU leadership assumes that Maassen will not accept the decision.
However, the party leadership "cannot accept" statements that Maassen accuses the CDU of taking a "left-wing" and "anti-German" course.
"The underlying ideas have no place in Germany's CDU."
First report
: Berlin – Hans-Georg Maassen only wants a warning.
CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja assumes, however, that the former president of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution should be excluded from the party.
"We will discuss it today and I'm very optimistic about that," said Czaja on the
RTL
and
ntv
program "Frühstart" on February 13.
"The Presidium has already made a unanimous decision and I believe that the Federal Executive Board will also follow this vote."
The CDU member is accused of racist and anti-Semitic statements.
Maassen used language and expressed ideas that were "incompatible" with the Union, Czaja said.
"A limit has been crossed here and the Union has a clear firewall to the right as well as to the left." That's why Maassen, in his view, "has no place in the CDU anymore".
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Maassen calls the CDU's threatening party expulsion procedure "attack on freedom of expression"
In a letter to the CDU leadership, Maassen had previously massively criticized the party expulsion procedure he was threatened with: “The illegal request to leave and the announcement of a party expulsion procedure because of political expressions of opinion are an attack on freedom of expression and inner-party democracy.
It's intimidating and ostracizing.”
The CDU presidium gave Maassen an ultimatum to leave the party at the end of January, but he let it pass.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz wants to inform about the result of today's deliberations at a press conference in the early afternoon (1.30 p.m.).
Maassen ran unsuccessfully as a direct candidate for the CDU in the 2021 federal election in a constituency in Thuringia.
He has no office in the party.
Since the end of January he has been the federal chairman of the arch-conservative Values Union, which is considered to be close to the CDU but is not an official grouping of the party.
(AFP/dpa/frs)
List of rubrics: © Martin Schutt/dpa