Söder turns self-critical: Admitting mistakes is “no skin off one's nose”

Markus Söder, leader of Bavaria's conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), struck an unusually self-critical tone after the party's convention in Munich. Speaking to public broadcaster ZDF, he called criticism of weak results in local elections and of his social media appearances justified. “It's no skin off your nose to admit that one thing or another was wrong,” the Bavarian governor said on Saturday. As party leader, he said, he also had to take on board the mood within the party.

Söder sees the conservative bloc under pressure: “We are threatened by the fringes, from the far right and from the far left.” The CSU wants “nothing to do with either right-wing or left-wing extremists,” he said. On Friday evening, he had already told the “heute journal” news program that the term “firewall,” referring to the refusal to cooperate with the far right, had “certainly burned out as a word”; he favors confronting the issues rather than a ban. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is “not a normal party,” he said. He called on Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla to remove right-wing extremists and identitarians from the party, but said the trend was going in the opposite direction.

Söder described cooperation with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) as “excellent.” He said he had not necessarily expected Chancellor Friedrich Merz to mention Ilse Aigner's candidacy for federal president in his convention speech. For the Federal Convention, which elects the president, he hoped for “not an agonizing five or six rounds of voting, but a strong democratic signal.”