Flowers, handshakes, pats on the back: This is how the CDU top candidates were greeted after the State election in Saxony and Thuringia on Monday morning by CDU leader Friedrich Merz in Berlin. In addition to the right-wing extremist AfD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which achieved historic results and punished the traffic light government in Berlin, the CDU was the third winner of the two state elections: In Thuringia, Mario Voigt second strongest force and improved his party’s result by 1.9 percentage points, in Saxony the local Prime Minister defended Michael Kretschmer first place – and probably also the office that Voigt is hoping for.
Nevertheless, no one is facing greater challenges than the CDUThe Christian Democrats are urgently looking for coalition partners and have tied themselves up in the process. The so-called Incompatibility decision.
Not with AfD and with Linke
“The CDU of Germany rejects coalitions and similar forms of cooperation with both the Left Party and the Alternative for Germany.” This is stated in a resolution from the 31st CDU party conference in 2014. 2018The decision was preceded by the assassination of the CDU politician Walter Luebcke by a right-wing extremist and a Government crisis in Thuringia in 2020, where the CDU and AfD competed in the election of a Prime Minister had joined forces.
Now the decision is being hotly debated, and again Thuringia the reason. Because there Mario Voigtbecause the CDU, like all other parties, rules out a coalition with the AfD, which Linketo a Majority government to be able to form.
Criticism is not new: Since the decision, the CDU has been accused of undermining the Left, which emerged from the successor to the socialist unity party of the GDR and which most recently won the election in Thuringia with Bodo Ramelow provided a prime minister for ten years, with a party partly classified by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as right-wing extremist equateThe CDU disagrees, saying that it is about “fundamental incompatibilities with values and principles”, as the resolution states.
Current Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow of the Left Party in Thuringia has extended his hand to the CDU.
East CDU versus West CDU
But even within the CDU there is disagreement: On the one hand, there are those who demand the repeal of the decision, such as the former CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja: He calls the Left in East Germany a “largely conservative social democracy with an East German character”. The East Berliner criticizes his party: “The CDU has entered a dead end with its improper interpretation of the horseshoe theory.”
On the other side are those who insist on the decision. Among them is CDU leader Merz. Voices like these can be found not only, but especially, in CDU regional associations in the western German states.
Opinions are also divided among political scientists: the fear that a softening of the incompatibility resolution to the left could at some point also lead to a softening to the right is opposed by the position that one must speak to all democratically elected parties – and fight extremists through confrontation and not through exclusion.
And the BSW?
In fact, the incompatibility decision can be criticized not only because of the CDU’s predicament in Thuringia, but also because of the fact that a coalition with the Alliance of Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) is not excluded.
The BSW, in turn, emerged from the Left Party. Its namesake represents much more radical positions on economics, social policy and the Ukraine war than the Left Party and once belonged to the left-wing extremist Communist Platform, which is classified as a Communist Party. Some CDU politicians are now demanding that BSW should also be included in the incompatibility decision.
This would allow the CDU to Thumbscrews tighten even more. And the Time-Journalist Jana Hensel warns: Excluding such a large number of votes would ultimately only benefit populists – left and right.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz (centre) with Mario Voigt (right) and Michael Kretschmer (left).
The CDU regional associations in Saxony and Thuringia emphasised their independence after the election: “Since the Saxon Union was founded, we have always decided things on our own,” said the Saxon Prime Minister Kretschmer already declared on Monday. For the CDU in Saxony, the SPD and BSW are enough for a majority in the state parliament.
For Mario Voigt in Thuringia, however, there are three options: breaking the incompatibility resolution; a minority government with the tolerance of the Left – that is allowed, and that is what the CDU did in the last legislative period under Bodo Ramelow. However, All parties have stressed their desire to avoid a repetition of this scenario. There is still hope that in the coming weeks at least one of the 12 Left Party MPs could switch to the BSW. Nothing is fixed, except for a date: by 1. October the new State Parliament meet.