German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s heir apparent on Monday shook up German politics by declaring she would step down as the governing party’s leader and not run for chancellor, fueling uncertainty in the country seen as Europe’s anchor of stability amid Brexit and pressure from the far right.
German Minister of Defense and Christian Democratic Union (CDU) chairwoman Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, whose flagging support dropped further after regional CDU lawmakers ignored the party’s instructions, told senior CDU members she would not seek the chancellorship in next year’s election.
The decision upended Merkel’s plan to hand Kramp-Karrenbauer the reins after leading Germany for more than 15 years.
“I took note of this decision with the utmost respect, but I also say that I regret it,” Merkel told reporters, thanking Kramp-Karrenbauer for her work and for agreeing to stay on until a new party leader is chosen.
The announcement followed days of in-fighting within the party over the election of a governor in the state of Thuringia.
CDU legislators there voted with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party last week to oust a left-wing incumbent.
The CDU representatives not only defied Kramp-Karrenbauer’s advance appeals and undermined her leadership, but broke what is widely regarded as a taboo in post-war German politics around cooperating with extremist parties.
“The AfD stands against everything we as the CDU represent,” Kramp-Karrenbauer told reporters in Berlin on Monday.
Manfred Weber, a German member of the EU parliament who leads a center-right bloc in the EU legislature, told daily newspaper Welt that the situation in Thuringia reflected a Europe that “is in a phase of growing instability; politics is becoming more serious.”
“In general. it is a sign of growing instability among the parties of the middle all across Europe. The parties of the middle must draw their red line to those with radical right tendencies,” Weber said.
“This approach from Kramp-Karrenbauer was and is correct,” he added.
Merkel has said she will not run for a fifth term in Germany’s next general election, which is now scheduled for fall 2021, but any shift to the right by the Christian Democrats could trigger a breakup of Merkel’s federal coalition with the center-left Social Democrats and increase the chances of an early national election.
After announcing her planned withdrawal, Kramp-Karrenbauer said: “If it’s up to me, it won’t have any effect on the stability of the grand coalition.”
Florian Hense, an analyst at Hamburg-based private bank Berenberg, said the Social Democrats “would have little to gain from provoking early elections.”
However, leading figures in Merkel’s party expressed concerns about fallout from the announcement.
German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Peter Altmaier, a close Merkel ally, said that the Christian Democrats were in “an unusually serious situation.”
Recent polls had Merkel’s conservative block at about 28 percent support nationally, followed by the left-leaning Greens at about 22 percent. The Social Democrats are struggling with only about 14 percent support, about the same as the AfD.
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