Germany’s Conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party has moved closer to the left-wing Die Linke party.
On May 7, Thorsten Frei, Minister of the Chancellery and right-hand-man for newly-minted German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, said in an online interview with TV station n-tv.de that the CDU would start internal talks on abolishing the so-called “incompatibility resolution”.
“We are in a situation where we have to re-evaluate one question or the other,” Frei told the interviewers.
“We have to talk about it together. At the end of the day, it is about finding pragmatic solutions for our country. The well-being of the country is always more important than the well-being of the party,” he added.
In 2018, the CDU had adopted a party resolution precluding any “coalition and other form of co-operation” both with Die Linke and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Die Linke is the legal successor to the Socialist Unity Party (SED), the one-time state party of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), which ran from 1949 to 1990.
As the CDU wrote in a document explaining its 2018 resolution: “The SED was responsible for the totalitarian dictatorship in the GDR … Political enemies and dissidents were not only spied upon and persecuted but also murdered in the GDR.… How can anybody ask the CDU to co-operate with the SED’s successor party which has never really distanced itself from this injustice?”
Despite that, after Friedrich Merz unexpectedly lost the first vote in the German Bundestag to become chancellor on May 6, the CDU had quickly to organised a two-thirds majority. This was necessary to change the rules of procedure so that there could be a second round of voting on the same day, instead of at least three days later.
The CDU and its coalition partner the Social Democratic Party (SPD) could only obtain such a “supermajority” with the support of either Die Linke and the Greens party or the right-wingers from AfD.
As both the CDU and the SPD were adamant not to vote together with AfD, the left-wing was the only option.
Merz was finally elected Chancellor in a second round of voting in the afternoon of May 6 with a slim majority of 325 of 614 votes cast.
Publicist Boris Reitschuster surmised on X on May 7 that the abolition of the incompatibility resolution was the price the CDU had to pay for the Left’s consent.
Journalist Ulrich Reitz said on news outlet FOCUS online that Die Linke was “the winner of the day”, even though it was calling for the abolishment of capitalism and a systemic revolution.
Alice Weidel, leader of the AfD, on X on May 7 accused the CDU of making a pact with the Left, calling it “the next great betrayal not only of the voters, but of our country”.