CDU retreat under way – Hoppermann: 'Not the one miracle weapon'
After three state election defeats, Germany's CDU leadership is meeting in Berlin to find a way out of its crisis. General Secretary Hoppermann played down hopes of quick fixes.
Archive image · Photo: Ansgar Koreng / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de (cropped and resized)
The leadership of Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) began a two-day retreat in Berlin on Sunday. Speaking to reporters beforehand, General Secretary Franziska Hoppermann said the talks were "not the one miracle weapon, but the start of a process", aimed at regaining the party's former strength and underpinning its claim to be a big-tent party.
Hoppermann said the party had clearly registered the warning signals from three state elections in September. The CDU must win back trust, keep modernisation in view and address people's everyday lives differently, she said. On Sept. 20 the CDU failed to clear the 5% threshold in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, while in Berlin the Left Party overtook it; in Saxony-Anhalt it lost nearly 20 points.
Former President Joachim Gauck, who has rejected calls for party leader and Chancellor Friedrich Merz to resign, is invited to dinner with the roughly 25-member presidium. Nationally, the conservative bloc is polling below 20%, down from 28.5% in the 2025 federal election.