Founded in 1945 as an interdenominational Christian party, the CDU effectively succeeded the pre-war CatholicCentre Party, with many former members joining the party, including its first leaderKonrad Adenauer. The party also included politicians of other backgrounds, including liberals and conservatives.[9] As a result, the party claims to represent "Christian-social, liberal and conservative" elements.[10] The CDU is generallypro-European in outlook.[11][12] Black is the party's customary and historical electoral colour. Other colours include red for the logo, orange for the flag, andblack-red-gold for the corporate design.[13]
1949 election poster of the CDU reading "We cannot do magic — but we can work/do our job. Help us. Vote for CDU. Germany is at stake!"
1949 election poster of the CDU reading "The Rescue: CDU"
Immediately following the end ofWorld War II and theforeign occupation of Germany, simultaneous yet unrelated meetings began occurring throughout the country, each with the intention of planning aChristian-democratic party. Consequently, the CDU was established inBerlin on 26 June 1945 and inRheinland andWestfalen in September of the same year.
The result of these meetings was the establishment of an inter-confessional (Catholic andProtestant alike) party influenced heavily by the political tradition ofliberal conservatism.[14] The CDU experienced considerable success gaining widespread support from the time of its creation in Berlin on 26 June 1945 until its firstconvention on 21 October 1950, at which future West German ChancellorKonrad Adenauer was named the first Chairman of the party.
The election poster of 1957 reading "No experiments" and featuring then ChancellorKonrad Adenauer (This was the only federal election in which the CDU obtained an absolute majority in theBundestag.)
In the beginning, it was not clear which party would be favored by the victors ofWorld War II, but by the end of the 1940s the governments of the United States and of the United Kingdom began to lean more toward the CDU and significantly away from theSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), especially due togeopolitical reasons. The latter was morenationalist and soughtGerman reunification even at the expense of concessions to theSoviet Union (USSR), depicting Adenauer as an instrument of both the Americans and theVatican. The Western powers appreciated the CDU's right-ward slant, its commitment to capitalism, and its value as a pivotal oppositional force to the communists, thereby keeping consistent with US/UK foreign policy. In addition, Adenauer was also trusted by the British.[15]
However, the party was split over issues of rearmament within the Western alliance and German unification as a neutral state. Adenauer staunchly defended his pro-Western position and outmaneuvered some of his opponents. He also refused to consider theSPD as a party of the coalition until he felt sure that they shared hisanti-communist position. The principled rejection of a reunification that would alienate Germany from the Western alliance made it harder to attract Protestant voters to the party, as most refugees from the former German territories east of theOder river were of that faith, as were the majority of the inhabitants ofEast Germany.[15]
Therefore, the CDU was the dominant political party for the first two decades following the establishment ofWest Germany in 1949. The durable alliance that the party had established with the liberalFree Democratic Party (FDP) as the leading tandem of several federal governments, and, implicitly, the strong partnership between Chancellor Adenauer and PresidentTheodor Heuss enabled West Germany to thoroughly rebuild itself in the wake of World War II. Adenauer remained the party's leader until 1963, when former Minister of EconomicsLudwig Erhard replaced him.[16] As theFree Democratic Party (FDP) withdrew from the governing coalition in 1966 due to disagreements over fiscal and economic policy, Erhard was forced to resign. Consequently, agrand coalition with the SPD took over government under CDU ChancellorKurt Georg Kiesinger.
Opposition against social-liberal governments (1969–1982)
The SPD quickly gained popularity and succeeded in forming asocial-liberal coalition with the FDP following the1969 federal election, forcing the CDU out of power for the first time in its history. The CDU and CSU were highly critical of ChancellorWilly Brandt's "change through rapprochement" policy towards the Eastern bloc(Ostpolitik) and protested sharply against the 1970treaties of Moscow andWarsaw that renounced claims to theformer eastern territories of Germany and recognised theOder–Neisse line as Germany's eastern border. The Union parties had close ties with theHeimatvertriebeneassociations (Germans who fled or were expelled from the eastern territories) who hoped for a return of or in these territories. Seven Bundestag members, including former vice chancellorErich Mende, defected from the FDP and SPD to the CDU in protest against these treaties, depriving Brandt of his majority, and providing a thin majority for the CDU and CSU. In April 1972, the CDU saw its chance to return to power, calling aconstructive vote of no confidence. CDU chairmanRainer Barzel was almost certain to become the new Chancellor. But not all parliamentarians voted as expected (it was later revealed that two CDU/CSU deputies had been bribed by the East GermanStasi): Brandt won the vote and stayed in office. Thus, the CDU continued its role asopposition for a total of thirteen years. In 1982, the FDP withdrew from the coalition with the SPD and allowed the CDU to regain power.
CDU ChairmanHelmut Kohl became the new Chancellor of West Germany and his CDU/CSU–FDP coalition was confirmed in the1983 federal election.
East German CDU leaderLothar de Maizière (left) with West German CDU leader Helmut Kohl in September 1990
After thecollapse of the East German government in 1989, Kohl—supported by the governments of the United States andreluctantly by those of France and the United Kingdom—called for German reunification. On 3 October 1990, the government of East Germany was abolished and its territory acceded to the territory of the Basic Law already in place in West Germany. TheEast German CDU merged with its West German counterpart and elections were held for the reunified country. Public support for the coalition's work in the process of German reunification was reiterated in the1990 federal election in which the CDU–FDP governing coalition experienced a clear victory. Although Kohl was re-elected, the party began losing much of its popularity because of an economic recession in the former GDR and increased taxes in the west. The CDU was nonetheless able to win the1994 federal election by a narrow margin thanks to an economic recovery.
Kohl served as chairman until the party's electoral defeat in 1998, when he was succeeded byWolfgang Schäuble. In the1998 federal election, the CDU polled 28.4% and the CSU 6.7% of the national vote, the lowest result for those parties since 1949; ared–green coalition under the leadership ofGerhard Schröder took power until 2005.
Angela Merkel was the first female leader of the CDU and the third longest serving of the party overall, after Kohl and Adenauer.
Schäuble resigned in early 2000 as a result of a partyfinancing scandal and was replaced byAngela Merkel, the first woman and the first person from East Germany to lead the federal party. She remained the leader of the CDU for more than eighteen years. In the2002 federal election, Merkel ceded the position of CDU/CSU's joint candidate for the chancellor's office to the leader of the sister party, Bavarian minister-presidentEdmund Stoiber. CDU and CSU polled slightly higher (29.5% and 9.0%, respectively), but still lacked the majority needed for a CDU–FDP coalition government and stayed in opposition.
In 2005, early elections were called after the CDU dealt the governing SPD a major blow, winning more than ten state elections, most of which werelandslide victories. The resulting grand coalition between the CDU/CSU and the SPD faced a serious challenge stemming from both parties' demand for the chancellorship. After three weeks of negotiations, the two parties reached a deal whereby CDU received the chancellorship while the SPD retained 8 of the 16 seats in the cabinet and a majority of the most prestigious cabinet posts.[17] The coalition deal was approved by both parties at party conferences on 14 November.[18] Merkel was confirmed as the first female Chancellor of Germany by the majority of delegates (397 to 217) in the newly assembled Bundestag on 22 November.[19] Since her first term in office, from 2005 to 2009, there have been discussions if the CDU was still "sufficiently conservative" or if it was "social-democratising".[20] In March 2009, Merkel answered with the statement "Sometimes I am liberal, sometimes I am conservative, sometimes I am Christian-social—and this is what defines the CDU."[21]
Although the CDU/CSU lost support in the2009 federal elections, their "desired partner" the FDP experienced the best election cycle in its history, thereby enabling a CDU/CSU–FDP coalition. This marked the first change of coalition partner by a Chancellor in German history and the first centre-right coalition government since 1998. CDU candidateChristian Wulff won the2010 presidential election in the third ballot, while opposition candidateJoachim Gauck (a Protestant pastor and former anti-communist activist in East Germany, who was favoured even by some CDU members) received a number of "faithless" votes from the government camp.
The decisions tosuspend conscription (late 2010) and to phase outnuclear energy (shortly after theFukushima disaster in 2011) broke with long-term principles of the CDU, moving the party into a more socially liberal direction and alienating some of its more conservative members and voters. At its November 2011 conference the party proposed a "wage floor", after having expressly rejected minimum wages during the previous years.[22]Psephologist and Merkel advisor Matthias Jung coined the term "asymmetric demobilisation" for the CDU's strategy (practised in the 2009, 2013 and 2017 campaigns)[23] of adopting issues and positions close to its rivals, e.g. regarding social justice (SPD) and ecology (Greens), thus avoiding conflicts that might mobilise their potential supporters. Some of the promises in the CDU's 2013 election platform were seen as "overtaking the SPD on the left".[24] While this strategy proved to be quite successful in elections, it also raised warnings that the CDU's profile would become "random", the party would lose its "essence"[22] and it might even be dangerous for democracy in general if parties became indistinguishable and voters demotivated.
President Wulff resigned in February 2012 due to allegations of corruption, triggering anearly presidential election. This time the CDU supported, reluctantly, nonpartisan candidate Joachim Gauck. The CDU/CSU–FDP coalition lasted until the2013 federal election, when the FDP lost all its seats in the Bundestag while the CDU and CSU won their best result since 1990, only a few seats short of an absolute majority. This was partly due to the CDU's expansion of voter base to all socio-structural groups (class, age or gender), partly due to the personal popularity of Chancellor Merkel.[25] After talks with the Greens had failed, the CDU/CSU formed a new grand coalition with the SPD.
Despite their long-cherished slogan of "There must be no democratically legitimised party to the right of CDU/CSU",[26] the Union has had a serious competitor to its right since 2013. The right-wing populistAlternative for Germany (AfD) was founded with the involvement of disgruntled CDU members. It drew on the discontent of some conservatives with the Merkel administration's handling of theEuropean debt crisis (2009–14) and later the2015 refugee crisis, lamenting a purported loss of sovereignty and control or even "state failure". Nearly 10 percent of early AfD members were defectors from the CDU.[27]
In 2017, the Bundestagvoted to legalisesame-sex marriage. Merkel had allowed theconscience vote to happen despite her personal objections. While she herself and the majority of the party's representatives voted against the proposal, a number of CDU deputies supported it.[28] In the2017 election, the CDU and CSU lost a large portion of their voteshare: With 26.8 percent of party list votes, the CDU received its worst result since 1949, losing more than fifty seats in the Bundestag (despite an enlargement of the parliament). After failing to negotiate a coalition with the FDP and Greens, they continued their grand coalition with the SPD. In October 2018, Merkel announced that she would step down as leader of the CDU that December and not seek reelection, but wanted to remain as Chancellor until 2021.[29]
On 7 December 2018,Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer waselected as federal chairwoman of the CDU. Kramp-Karrenbauer was considered Merkel's ideological successor, though holding moresocially conservative positions, such as opposition tosame-sex marriage. Kramp-Karrenbauer's election saw a rise in support for the CDU in national polling, and her personal popularity was initially high.[30] However, she suffered a sharp decline in popularity in the lead-up to the2019 European Parliament election, in which the CDU/CSU suffered its worst ever result in a national election with just 29%. Kramp-Karrenbauer thereafter remained one of the least popular politicians nationally.[31][32]
Kramp-Karrenbauer resigned as party chair on 10 February 2020, in the midst of the2020 Thuringian government crisis. The Thuringian CDU had been perceived as cooperating with theAlternative for Germany (AfD) to prevent the election of a left-wing government, breaching the long-standing taboo in Germany surrounding cooperation with thefar-right. Kramp-Karrenbauer was perceived as unable to enforce discipline within the party during the crisis, which she claimed was complicated by unclear positions within the party regarding cooperation with the AfD andThe Left, which party statute holds to be equally unacceptable. While the Thuringia crisis was the immediate trigger for Kramp-Karrenbauer's resignation, she stated the decision had "matured some time ago",[34] and media attributed it to the troubled development of her brief leadership.[35]
Kramp-Karrenbauer remained in office as Minister of Defence and interim party leader from February untilthe leadership election was held in January 2021.[36][37] Originally scheduled for April 2020, it was delayed multiple times due to theCOVID-19 pandemic, and was ultimately held online. Minister-President of North Rhine-WestphaliaArmin Laschet won the election with 52.8% of delegate votes. His main opponentFriedrich Merz, was seen as more right-wing, who won 47.2% of vote; Merz had also run against Kramp-Karrenbauer in 2018 and been defeated. Laschet's election was seen as an affirmation of Merkel's leadership and the CDU's centrist orientation.[38]
On 7 October 2021, Armin Laschet, signaled that he would step down after a disastrousgeneral election result, with the CDU suffering its worst ever general election result.[39] Anew leadership election was called in December andFriedrich Merz, of the right-wing faction of the CDU, was elected by a large majority of 62.1% of voters, defeating pro-Merkel candidatesNorbert Röttgen andHelge Braun.[40] The Congress of the CDU officially elected Merz as new party Chairman on 22 January 2022, and he assumed office on 31 January 2022.[8][41]
In the2024 European parliament election, the CDU remained the largest party in Germany, winning 30.0% of the vote in a combined list with the CSU, led by CSU MEPManfred Weber. The combined list held on to all 29 seats, with the CDU maintaining 23 seats while the CSU had the remaining 6 seats.[42] In October 2024, CDU again became proponents ofnuclear energy, advocating reactivation of closed reactors and construction of new plants.[43]
In her 2005 campaign,Angela Merkel was unwilling to express explicitly Christian views while maintaining that her party had never lost its concept of values. Merkel and Bundestag PresidentNorbert Lammert have been keen to clarify that CDU references to the "dominant culture" imply "tolerance and living together".[15] According to party analyst Stephan Eisel, her avoiding the values issue may have had the opposite effect as she failed to mobilize the party's core constituency.[49]
As aconservative party, the CDU supports stronger punishments of crimes and involvement on the part of theBundeswehr in cases of domesticanti-terrorism offensives. In terms of immigrants, the CDU supports initiatives to integrate immigrants through language courses and aims to further control immigration. It holds thatdual citizenship should only be allowed in exceptional cases.
In terms offoreign policy, the CDU commits itself toEuropean integration and a strongrelation with the United States. In theEuropean Union, the party opposes the entry of Turkey, preferring instead a privileged partnership. In addition to citing various human rights violations, the CDU also believes that Turkey's unwillingness to recogniseCyprus as an independent sovereign state contradicts the European Union policy that its members must recognise the existence of one another.
The party supports a business-friendly adaptation of theEuropean Green Deal, and would like to continue to allow vehicles with combustion engines, research synthetic fuels and promote research into nuclear fusion. The party calls forEU member states to limit their annual borrowing to three percent of theirgross domestic product.[50]
This section needs to beupdated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(February 2025)
The CDU has an official party congress adjudication that prohibits coalitions and any sort of cooperation with eitherThe Left or theAlternative for Germany.[51]
CDU leader Friedrich Merz took blowback for his political approaches to the AfD after he called his party in 2023 an "alternative... with substance".[55] Political observers from abroad say that the CDU's boundaries with the far-right are eroding.[56][57]
The party congress is the highest organ of the CDU. It meets at least every two years, determines the basic lines of CDU policy, approves theparty program and decides on thestatutes of the CDU.
The CDU party congress consists of the delegates of the CDU regional associations, the foreign associations and the honorarychairmen. The state associations send exactly 1,000 delegates who have to be elected by the state or district conventions. The number of delegates that a regional association can send depends on the number of members of the association six months before the party congress and the result of the last federal election in the respective federal state. The foreign associations recognized by the federal executive committee each send a delegate to the party congress, regardless of their number of members.
The federal committee is the second highest body and deals with all political and organizational matters that are not expressly reserved for the federal party congress. For this reason it is often called asmall party congress.
The CDU federal executive heads the federal party. It implements the resolutions of the federal party congress and the federal committee and convenes the federal party congress. The CDU Presidium is responsible for executing the resolutions of the federal executive committee and handling current and urgent business. It consists of the leading members of the federal executive board and is not an organ of the CDU in Germany.
Before 1966, membership totals in the CDU organisation were only estimated. The numbers after 1966 are based on the total from 31 December of the previous year. In 2023, the CDU had 363.101 members.[58]
Lesbian and Gay Members of the Union [de] (LSU), neither an organization within the party (Vereinigung) nor an officially affiliated group (Sondergruppe) there of, as of Dec. 2020 party caucus vote still listed as "other" (Sonstige Gruppen), representing LGBT+ members of the CDU.
TheKonrad Adenauer Foundation is the think-tank of the CDU. It is named after the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and first president of the CDU. The foundation offers political education, conducts scientific fact-finding research for political projects, grants scholarships to gifted individuals, researches the history ofChristian democracy and supports and encouragesEuropean unification, international understanding and development-policy cooperation. Its annual budget amounts to around 120 million euro and is mostly funded by taxpayer money.[59]
Both the CDU and theChristian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) originated after World War II, sharing a concern for the Christian worldview. In the Bundestag, the CDU is represented in a common faction with the CSU. This faction is calledCDU/CSU, or informally the Union. Its basis is a binding agreement known as aFraktionsvertrag between the two parties.
The CDU and CSU are legally and organisationally separate parties; their ideological differences are sometimes a source of conflict. The most notable and serious such incident was in 1976, when the CSU underFranz Josef Strauß ended the alliance with the CDU at a party conference in Wildbad Kreuth. This decision was reversed shortly thereafter when the CDU threatened to run candidates against the CSU in Bavaria.
Since its formation, the CSU has been more conservative than the CDU. The CSU and the state of Bavaria decided not to sign theBasic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany as they insisted on more autonomy for the individualstates.[60] The CSU has actively participated in all political affairs of the Bundestag, the German government, theBundesrat, the parliamentary elections of the German President, the European Parliament and meetings withMikhail Gorbachev in Russia.
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^Martin Seeleib-Kaiser; Silke Van Dyk; Martin Roggenkamp (2008).Party Politics and Social Welfare: Comparing Christian and Social Democracy in Austria, Germany and the Netherlands. Edward Elgar. p. 10.
^Sven-Uwe Schmitz (2009).Konservatismus. VS Verlag. p. 142.
^Martin Steven (2018). "Conservatism in Europe – the political thought of Christian Democracy". In Mark Garnett (ed.).Conservative Moments: Reading Conservative Texts. Bloomsbury. p. 96.
^abcPaul Gottfried. "The Rise and Fall of Christian Democracy in Europe".Orbis, fall 2007.
^Melanie Haas (2009). "Die CDU in der großen Koalition zwischen 2005 und 2007". In Ralf Thomas Baus (ed.).Zur Zukunft der Volksparteien: Das Parteiensystem untr den Bedingungen zunehmender Fragmentierung. Konrad Adenauer Foundation. p. 20.
^"Mal bin ich liberal, mal bin ich konservativ, mal bin ich christlich-sozial – und das macht die CDU aus". Angela Merkel in the TV ShowAnne Will, 22 March 2009. Cited inAndreas Wagner (2014).Wandel und Fortschritt in den Christdemokratien Europas: Christdemokratische Elegien angesichts fragiler volksparteilicher Symmetrien. Springer VS. p. 211.
^abUdo Zolleis (2015). "Auf die Kanzlerin kommt es an: Die CDU unter Angela Merkel". In Reimut Zohlnhöfer; Thomas Saalfeld (eds.).Politik im Schatten der Krise: Eine Bilanz der Regierung Merkel 2009–2013. Springer VS. pp. 81–83.
^Christina Holtz-Bacha (2019). "Bundestagswahl 2017: Flauer Wahlkampf? Spannende Wahl!".Die (Massen-)Medien im Wahlkampf. Springer VS. pp. 4–5.
^Manfred G. Schmidt (2015). "Die Sozialpolitik der CDU/CSU-FDP-Koalition von 2009 bis 2013". In Reimut Zohlnhöfer; Thomas Saalfeld (eds.).Politik im Schatten der Krise: Eine Bilanz der Regierung Merkel 2009–2013. Springer VS. pp. 413–414.
^Petra Hemmelmann (2017).Der Kompass der CDU: Analyse der Grundsatz- und Wahlprogramme von Adenauer bis Merkel. Springer VS. p. 162.
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Mitchell, Maria (2012).The Origins of Christian Democracy: Politics and Confession in Modern Germany. University of Michigan Press.ISBN978-0-472-11841-0.
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The Left: is currently only in the state parliaments ofBerlin, Bremen,Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia.
BSW: is currently only in the state parliaments of Berlin, Brandenburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony, and Thuringia.
FW: is currently only in the state parliaments ofBavaria, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony; does not participate in state elections inBrandenburg, an associated partyBVB/FW participates here.
