Who is (and what does he think) Armin Laschet, new president of the CDU in Germany. An in-depth analysis by Pierluigi Mennitti from Berlin
Armin Laschet is the new president elected by the CDU congress in Germany. Laschet won the ballot against Friedrich Merz with 521 votes to 466. The new president of the Christian Democratic party thanked for the trust: “I am aware of responsibility,” he said. “I will make sure that even in federal elections the Union can decide the chancellor,” he said. The choice of the candidate for the chancellery will be made in the spring. (Redazione Start Magazine) EXTRACT FROM PIERLUIGI MENNITTI’S IN-DEPTH WITH THE PROFILE OF LASCHET PUBLISHED IN THE LAST DAYS:
Laschet is dying to succeed Angela Merkel. When Kramp-Karrenbauer was elected to the presidency two years ago, he, a sibylline, favored the idea that the leadership of the party should not automatically lead to the candidacy for chancellor: in due course, the party would choose whoever offered the best guarantees of success.
Laschet tries to recover enamel with a lean program of 10 points, presented with Spahn a few days ago. A trace also for the upcoming electoral campaign, Impulso 2021. The indication of the year suggests that this is not a broad-based program like Gerhard Schroder’s Agenda 2010, the last reform proposal that Germany remembers. Rather than a short-term plan, to win over the party and get it to a vote. There is a bit of everything: from a moratorium on the burdens of companies exhausted by the pandemic, to zero tolerance for crime and extremism (right and left). The only point with a bit of perspective is the promise to establish a ministry for digitization in the future government. The decade that opens, say Laschet and Spahn, will be that of modernization.
The program with which Laschet presents himself at the congress has an intimate breath and focuses heavily on Merkel’s “core business”, with some concessions to the conservative wing: united in the party, harmony between the various components that must all be represented at the various organizational levels, a good dose of Europeanism combined with the principle of multilateralism (Atlantic relationship but also dialogue with Russia and China), clear closure to Afd’s right-wing populism. On this last point, Laschet appears more credible than Merz, to whom the desire to move the party to the right is controversially attributed. Laschet does not believe that Afd’s votes can and should be recovered: the risk is to lose those in the center won with Merkel’s policy. His CDU will not pursue the agenda of the national-populists, firm ground the bar in the center:
A line based on one strength: the victory in 2017 in the regional elections of North Rhine-Westphalia, a key Land for German political equilibrium. Afd, which was experiencing its best moment at that time, stopped at 7.4%. Of his two congressional opponents, none can boast such an auspicious success on the field: not Merz, who has never been a candidate to lead a Land, let alone Rottgen, who lost North Rhine-Westphalia in 2012. Laschet always repeats it, slyly: to lead a party with a governmental vocation, one must know how to win an election.
Born in Aachen in 1961 into a family originally from Wallonia and emigrated to the other side of the border in the 1920s, Laschet joined the CDU at the age of 18, in the wake of a Catholic training and militancy. He studies law in Munich and Bonn, then experiences as a freelance journalist in the Catholic newspapers of his city. In 1989 he entered the city council, in 1994 he was elected to the Bundestag, but lost his direct seat in the following elections. In 1999 he tries again, this time with success, the parliamentary way, but in Europe. The years in the Strasbourg parliament will strengthen his pro-European inclination, but in 2005 he returns home to become Minister of Integration in his Land, North Rhine-Westphalia. They give him the nickname of “Armin the Turk”, teasing him good-naturedly for his open and tolerant positions towards immigration. It will remain one of the hallmarks of him and Laschet will be the most tenacious supporter of Angela Merkel’s open door policy. A position that had not prevented him, a few years earlier, from defending the Social Democrat Thilo Sarrazin, author of a book that caused a sensation and a critic of Muslim immigration (“Germany destroys itself”) from an attack by Merkel herself.
The only other point of friction with the chancellor (of which for eight years and deputy in the party) and on energy policy. As an exponent of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Land that has marked the mining history of Germany, has always considered the acceleration imposed on the abandonment of coal a flight forward. For the rest, her motto is: no break with the Merkel era, but continuity, harmony in the party, everyone’s involvement. The union with Spahn is a sign of his ability to create alliances and the enamel found by the chancellor at the time of the pandemic is a point in his favor in the congressional games. Despite the recovery of her contenders, she enters the digital congress as the favorite. In February she turns 60.
