Tag: CDU

It would be naive to believe that Germany's economy can stay healthy while much of the rest of the continent is "sick". So, as Peer Steinbrück and the SPD demanded repeatedly, it is in Germany's interest to finally rethink its strategy and boost growth writes Jo Leinen MEP.

The European Union’s economic and financial challenges left the bloc in no doubt that its most populous member state is also its most politically powerful. On 22 September 2013, Germans will decide in a federal election whether that power remains within its current ruling conservative coalition led by incumbent Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), or whether to entrust it to the Social Democrats or a new coalition. In the run up to the elections, Europe has largely remained off the agenda.

Peer Steinbrück, the former Germany finance minister who is to run as the Social-Democrat (SPD) challenger to Chancellor Angela Merkel next year, has demonstrated his tendency for plain speaking by calling Swiss bankers 'Indians' in a move that seems to set the tone for his electoral campaign.

In Berlin, he is known as Angela Merkel's smartest minister. But Norbert Röttgen has led a lacklustre campaign ahead of key elections this Sunday (13 May) in North Rhine-Westphalia, where opinion polls predict a historical defeat for the Christian Democrats in Germany's most populous state.