![]() Previously an MEP and a minister for integration in his home state, he was a vocal ally of Merkel’s open-borders policy during the 2015 refugee crisis. ![]() The only one of the three candidates to currently hold a governing post, the Roman Catholic from Aachen has governed Germany’s most populous state, North-Rhine Westphalia since 2017 in a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats. Laschet, and his two rival contenders, had already ruled out a coalition with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, currently polling at around 8%. Under current projections, a CDU-Green coalition would be the only power-sharing deal to guarantee an absolute majority at federal elections. If Laschet were to be anointed as the CDU’s chancellor candidate in the coming weeks, he would find himself up against campaigning against the colourless but competent Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, currently Germany’s finance minister, and either Annalena Baerbock or Robert Habeck representing the Greens, currently second in the polls.Īs a former member of the “pizza connection” – a loose network of young conservative and Green delegates who scoped out political similarities over dinner in the mid-90s – Laschet would seem a natural fit to lead the CDU into its first ever coalition with the ecological party. In theory, the party could nominate another politician to run for the chancellorship: potential candidates would be Markus Söder, the popular leader of CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the CSU, or the health minister, Jens Spahn, who ran as the number two in Laschet’s campaign. In times of geopolitical unrest and pandemic uncertainty, Laschet’s promise to follow Merkel’s consensual course may also earn him the opportunity to lead the Christian Democrats into German elections on 26 September as his party’s official candidate for chancellor. Merkel stepped down as party chair in December 2018. Once the digital vote has been confirmed by a postal ballot, Laschet will formally replace Merkel’s previously designated successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who announced her resignation as CDU chair in February 2020 after an unsuccessful period in the spotlight. The third candidate on the ballot, the foreign policy specialist Norbert Röttgen, was eliminated in the first round of voting. ![]()
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