Merkel abandons the CDU and wants to remain Chancellor

After her party's heavy defeat on Sunday in the Hessian legislative elections, Chancellor Merkel is in charge of the CDU. That's what she said Monday at the party's national office in Berlin. After 2021, she will not return as Chancellor.

Merkel has been Chancellor since 2005 and now runs her fourth law firm. If elections are to take place in Germany before 2021, it will not participate either. And she does not intend to pursue her political career in Brussels, she said. She does not aspire anymore to another public service. "I think the time has come to start a new chapter," she said. "It's my last term as Chancellor, and after that I'm out of politics for myself." Questions about what she plans to do after 2021 have gone unnoticed by Merkel.

Merkel Succession

In early December, the CDU chooses a new president at the party congress in Hamburg. Almost immediately after the announcement of the news of Merkel's resignation towards Monday, the first candidates for the post were reported. The former chairman of the group, Friedrich Merz, has served on behalf of the CDU in the German Parliament and the European Parliament and has chaired the German branch of the Blackrock asset manager in recent years. Shortly after Merz, the First Secretary General, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, and the current Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, reported successively to party leaders. The latter is known as critic of the Chancellor.

According to the Reuters news agency, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, general secretary of the CDU, also announced Monday that she was eligible. Kramp-Karrenbauer is an important confidante of Merkel. It has long been supposed that she wanted to follow the chancellor. "A very good process that we have not known for eighteen years," said Merkel about the alleged candidacy of members of her party.

Up to now, Merkel has always said that the office of president and chancellor of the party had to be reunited in one person. The fact that she renounces the leadership of the party at the CDU is therefore a break with this statement. Last week she had already made a rare statement about her estate. She said that all of her predecessor's attempts to name successors failed. "And that's good too," she added.

In Hessen, the CDU lost more than 10 percentage points. In the legislative elections held two weeks ago, the party also decisively lost. The party is also distraught at the national level.