Criticism of CDU leader Friedrich Merz has shown no sign of easing following the party's election defeat in Saxony-Anhalt. On Saturday, the CDU district chairmen in Saxony called for a "thorough analysis", while CDU campaigners in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern were already expressing fears that the party could fail to clear the five-percent threshold. At federal level, meanwhile, the coalition partner SPD reacted angrily to calls from within the Union for Labour Minister Bärbel Bas to resign.
The district chairmen of the Saxony CDU expressed their concern over the course of the CDU-led coalition government in a letter, as reported by the newspaper "Welt". The letter was reportedly sent to Merz and CDU Secretary-General Franziska Hoppermann.
With nationwide polling putting the CDU at around 20 percent, the question was whether "the CDU is still a people's party", Saxony CDU Bundestag member Florian Oest, one of the letter's co-signatories, told the newspaper. There needed to be "a new departure and more substance". The CDU district chairmen should therefore "come together immediately and discuss how we can become capable of acting, not wait until the beginning of November as planned."
Sharp criticism had already come from Dennis Radtke, head of the CDU's workers' wing (CDA). In a letter on Friday, he said that the course pursued by Merz under the slogan of a "pure CDU" had failed. Radtke called for "a change of course – in terms of content, the political narrative and communication." CDU Secretary-General Hoppermann defended Merz's course. She naturally recognised that the declining poll numbers for the Christian Democrats raised questions, Hoppermann said on Deutschlandfunk. "But we are on the right path."
Berlin CDU lead candidate Stefan Evers called on the federal government to show greater unity and make decisions more quickly. Disagreements had to be handled "behind closed doors" and "joint successes then presented to the outside world", he told the "Rheinische Post".
Berlin, like Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, will hold elections next Sunday. Polls predict a close race in the German capital, which has so far been governed under CDU leadership, with the Left Party. The polling figures for the governing party are even more dramatic in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The latest surveys put the CDU at just seven percent in the north.
"There is a fear of failing to clear the five-percent threshold," Marc Reinhardt, deputy CDU parliamentary group leader in the Schwerin state parliament, told the "Tagesspiegel". "Many people are dissatisfied, and the federal government is providing no tailwind." CDU campaigners were increasingly being approached about Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
However, Reinhardt said the real problem was that Minister-President Manuela Schwesig (SPD) was running a "content-free populist campaign" against the AfD, which is currently leading in the polls. "She polarises, she only thinks about herself. The CDU is thus becoming a millstone between the far right and the left." If the CDU were actually to fail to return to the state parliament, it would be unprecedented in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The federal SPD, meanwhile, reacted with outrage to a call by Christian von Stetten (CDU), head of the Union parliamentary group for the Mittelstand, for Social Affairs Minister Bas to resign. "The minister is no longer tenable," von Stetten told the "Bild" newspaper. "For months, she has been blocking the reforms that our country so urgently needs."
SPD Secretary-General Tim Klüssendorf described this as "a helpless diversionary manoeuvre". The Union would be "well advised not to project the palpable dissatisfaction and the ongoing internal debates within its parliamentary group onto its coalition partner now", he told "Stern".
SPD parliamentary managing director Dirk Wiese called on the coalition partner to "keep its nerve". The aim had to be to move things forward together within the coalition, he said, adding: "Arguments based on absurd and, above all, personal accusations have never helped."
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