Germany’s Christian Democrats (CDU) have split over the question of cooperating politically with the hard-left party Die Linke.
While the CDU has maintained a longstanding ban on any political cooperation with Die Linke, some within the party have begun to question this stance.
Die Linke was the direct successor of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the Marxist-Leninist party which governed East Germany before the end of the Cold War.
Due to this contentious legacy, the CDU had previously adopted an ‘incompatibility resolution’ explicitly ruling out any form of cooperation with the party.
However, the CDU currently commands only a narrow majority alongside its coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD). Between the two parties, the coalition controlled 328 seats in the 630-member Bundestag.
With an occasional need for a two-thirds majority in parliament — for key decisions and certain political appointments — a growing number of Christian Democrats have begun to suggest more political collaboration with Die Linke, which had 64 seats.
It was only with Die Linke’s support earlier this month that Friedrich Merz was able to assume the office of Chancellor, after unexpectedly losing an initial parliamentary vote when 18 unnamed coalition members rebelled.
Thanks to Die Linke’s backing, his parliamentary managers were swiftly able to garner a two-thirds majority for organise a second round of voting, salvaging what remained of Merz’s embattled public image after the historic Bundestag fumble.
Some Christian Democrats have suggested if the party cooperated more with Die Linke, then the same should also be possible with the AfD, especially in the Länder (or states) of the former East Germany.
Karin Prien, Family and Education Minister and the CDU’s deputy leader, has advocated for more flexibility and warned against dogmatism in the debate.
“Our time demands more tolerance of ambiguity and less dogmatism from all democratic forces in Germany,” Prien told German newsweekly Stern.
The Union parties must “weigh up pragmatically” each possible cooperation, and keep an eye on “the stability of democratic institutions”, she added.
For her part, Prien argued there was a fundamental difference between Die Linke and the AfD.
“The AfD is the party of right-wing extremism, it is a danger to our liberal democracy,” she claimed, while she believed Die Linke was not.
She echoed her party colleague Mario Voigt, Thuringia’s prime minister (or Ministerpräsident), who said his party needed to be more “pragmatic”.
“With a party that does not work towards overthrowing the system like the AfD, the CDU can make parliamentary agreements out of state political responsibility beyond all fundamental differences,” said Prien.
Voigt did not have a majority behind him in his own state and has needed the cooperation of Die Linke to keep his job. It was AfD that came out on top in Thuringia’s recent elections.
Thorsten Frei, a close ally of Merz and head of the Federal Chancellery, indicated earlier there was a need to “re-evaluate” their handling of Die Linke, but U-turned on his comments a day later.
The CDU’s general secretary Carsten Linnemann, though, told Stern he supported the policy not to cooperate with Die Linke.
“For me, there can be no political cooperation with the Left Party as long as extremist groups participate there,” he said.
Linnemann went on to accuse them of trivialising anti-Semitism at their party congress, saying this “has distanced Die Linke even more from the CDU than it already has.”
Christoph Ploß, a CDU MP, called Die Linke the “renamed party of the Wall and Shoot Order” and clearly ruled out cooperation because of the party’s alleged anti-Semitism.
At its federal party congress in May 2025, Die Linke adopted a new stance on the definition of anti-Semitism, moving away from the widely used definition by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
The party congress also featured contentious debates over Israel and the Middle East. Delegates passed a resolution accusing Israel of deliberately starving Palestinian civilians.