Ahead of CDU retreat: Voigt calls for a restart and lower living costs
After September's election defeats, the CDU presidium meets with Chancellor Merz on Sunday and Monday. Thuringia's premier Voigt wants life to become affordable again.
Archive image · Photo: Superbass / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Ahead of the CDU presidium's retreat this Sunday and Monday, Thuringia's Minister President Mario Voigt is calling for a substantive restart of his party. Heating, filling up the car and shopping have become too expensive for many people, he told the German Press Agency. "We must talk about how life can become affordable again for people," Voigt said. He called the retreat, which Chancellor Friedrich Merz will also attend on Sunday, important for setting the course for the coming months.
The agenda includes the consequences of the defeats in the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin, as well as the future reform course. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania the CDU is no longer represented in the state parliament, and in Berlin it risks losing its place in government. Voigt pointed to polls showing the AfD clearly ahead nationwide: it cannot be the CDU's goal "to be the second-strongest force in Germany". He said he sensed a "deep longing" among the grassroots for the party to state clearly again what it stands for.
Criticism is also coming from Berlin. The city's CDU chairman Stefan Evers told t-online: "We must ask ourselves why fewer and fewer people trust the CDU." According to ZDFheute, he also holds the chancellor partly responsible, saying Merz lacks empathy and approachability. The retreat should clarify how the reform course can inspire more confidence than fear of change, he said.