The day after the European elections, the political Berlin fluctuates between horror and departure. And Merkel? It remains in the Background. But she is in the conversation.
Election winner: Sven Giegold (l.) and Robert Habeck of the Green
The Morning after Angela Merkel (CDU), remained invisible. For the Chancellor, a press, of public meeting in the evening. Meanwhile, the CDU was Boss Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer since the Morning of the crisis management in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus, the party headquarters of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has.
Maybe they both occasionally looked at the time on the results in the home, in his own constituency. In Kramp cart Builder, place of residence, the Saarland, Püttlingen, the CDU in the European elections 38.0 percent, 0.4 percentage points less than in 2014. In Merkel’s parliamentary constituency in the North-East of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the CDU lost far more than ten percentage points to just under 30 percent and also cut significantly worse than in the Bundestag election in 2017.
“Tectonic Shifts”
A shadow on the Chairman of CDU-Boss Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer
The worst EU election result for the CDU is so, but Merkel? Individual voices from the back rows, no big names, had picked up since Sunday evening, and a rapid change in the Chancellery demanded. The head of the Union-SME Association, Carsten Linnemann, a Merkel-critics, says clearly: “The Union is about to lose its Status as a people’s party.”
The party leadership sees it differently. CDU Vice Volker Bouffier speaks of the “tectonic shifts”, his colleague, Armin Laschet of a “Wake-up call to the policy”. The party boss even goes to the essence of Christian democracy: It is now a “historical Situation, when it comes to the question of whether the concept of the people’s party working for the future”. “People’s party” – since then, Kramp-Karrenbauer in the autumn of 2018 into the race for the Merkel follow-up entry, she spoke of the CDU as the “last remaining people’s party”, which covers all social groups. Then Greta Thunberg and “Friday forfuture”, finally, Youtuber Rezo and his fundamental criticism of the Grand coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD with a tailwind of almost all the prominent Youtuber in Germany.
Green and big
The leads to of the party, which can be referred to confidently as the winner of the election in Germany. The Greens have doubled their income, and most of all: they are in nine of the ten largest German cities with the strongest political force. In the evening, you have still celebrated. In the Morning, the top candidate Sven Giegold face (in the title of the picture to the left) and party leader Robert Habeck scores and almost Chancellor of detention left the questions of the media.
Eventually, it bursts from Giegold out that on this press conference “surreal” cast. The results of the election stand for more climate protection, for more Europe – and now the journalists and a journalist asked the inside to the Alliance options in the Federal policy and the mistakes of the CDU. Habeck and Giegold avoid the term “people’s party”. But you rewrite with respect to the opportunities and challenges facing their 80.000-members-party.
In East Germany established: the AfD
The Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose top representatives sits for a few minutes after the Greens in the Federal press conference on the same microphones, is not a winner, though it suffers in several East German länder impressive results. At the same time, you don’t come in eleven Federal States in Germany about ten per cent. In the autumn in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia state elections. The right-wing populists in the European elections, the strongest, or – in Thuringia – almost the strongest force. AfD-Chef Jörg Meuthen, given the strength of his party in the East Germany government investments in the future. “Good things take time,” he said on Monday in Berlin.
“Not rushed”
The SPD is so deeply in the marrow, that there are no quick demands for human consequences. You must now “respond in haste,” says the member of the Bundestag, Carsten Schneider, one of the few who will comment in the Morning. For the first time ever, the proud old party in a nationwide election is only the third strongest force after the Green. In the case of first-time voters nationwide and in the States of Saxony and Bavaria, a total of the result of the SPD remains single-digit. The people’s party?
Worry looks to the future: the SPD Leader Andrea Nahles
First of all, the press conference of the SPD is scheduled after the Board meeting at 11.30 am. Then you will be moved several times, until the party leader Andrea Nahles stands at 14.30 tired and have time for three questions. More time Nahles has not. Because she has another appointment. As well as the Vice-Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the CDU-Boss Annegret Kramp-karrenbauer, she speaks early in the evening in the Chancellery with Angela Merkel over the European situation.
“No Cabinet Reshuffle”
As a Federal Europe, politically, for the time being, a big change of personnel. Federal Minister of justice Katarina Barley, the Federal justice Minister and top candidate in the European election, resigns from the government office and switches as MEPs to Brussels. “The request for release was yesterday, on the way,” says a spokeswoman for the Ministry of the German wave. An hour later, government spokesman Steffen Seibert, the Federal press conference, says the application is not a stand “according to his knowledge yet been received”. Time pressure to get the change at the top of the Ministry, will happen in a timely manner. Seibert says a sentence that resonates somehow for a long time. “More Cabinet reshufflings will not stand.” Merkel clearly wants to be no break in the work of the Grand coalition.
Kramp-Karrenbauer, a good six months in the office of the party Chairman, has already announced a few weeks ago for Sunday and Monday, a closed meeting of the Federal Executive Board. Now the SPD loads in parallel for mounting to the exam session and will advise about the consequences. For both parties it should also go to the climate protection – the welfare of choice a crucial issue in the European elections. Crisis meetings here and there.