#Merkel successor install

“A lot of political commentators have said the ‘dam has been breached, this is a turning point, we should never cooperate with the AfD,’” Sudha David-Wilp, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, told me. The Thuringia election illuminated this crisis as it pushed Merkel’s CDU to cross the once-unimagined prospect of having to cooperate with the far-right AfD to bolster its political power. This has complicated governance, especially on the state and local levels. Germany’s politics have become more and more fragmented, with groups on both the right ( AfD) and the left ( the Greens) challenging the traditional establishment parties - the center-right CDU and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) - and their two-party dominance. It also foreshadows an uncertain future for the party and Germany after Merkel leaves power next year. The CDU’s decision to join forces with the AfD in Thuringia wasn’t just verboten - it revealed the cracks within the CDU under AKK’s leadership and her weakened control over the party. But even more significantly, it defied a ban on the CDU working with the growing far-right faction.

The move shunted aside the more popular left-wing leader.

#Merkel successor install

There, the center-right CDU voted with the far-right, anti-immigrant, anti-Islam Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) to install a member of the smaller, pro-business Free Democrats as state premier. Kramp-Karrenbauer (also known as AKK) said Monday she would step down as CDU leader after a controversial election in the German state of Thuringia last week. She was widely seen as Merkel’s preferred candidate, and potentially next-in-line to become chancellor when Germany votes in federal elections in 2021.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chosen successor resigned Monday, shaking up German politics and throwing Merkel’s legacy into question.Īnnegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the minister of defense, took over as leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in late 2018.