page_title: Christian Democratic Union of Germany
section_title: Merkel era (2000–2018)
hierarchical_section_title: Christian Democratic Union of Germany / History / Merkel era (2000–2018)
caption_attribution_description: Angela Merkel auf dem CDU Bundesparteitag Dezember 2014 in Köln
context_page_description: The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian-democratic and liberal-conservative political party in Germany. It is the major catch-all party of the centre-right in German politics.
  Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has been leader of the CDU since December 2018. On 10 February 2020, she announced her resignation, but will remain as leader until a successor is elected. The CDU is the largest party in the Bundestag, the German federal legislature, 200 out of 709 seats, having won 26.8% of votes in the 2017 federal election. It forms the CDU/CSU Bundestag faction, also known as the Union, with its Bavarian counterpart the Christian Social Union in Bavaria. The group's parliamentary leader is Ralph Brinkhaus, a member of the CDU.
  Founded in 1945 as an interdenominational Christian party, the CDU effectively succeeded the pre-war Catholic Centre Party, with many former members joining the party, including its first leader Konrad Adenauer. The party also included politicians of other backgrounds, including liberals and conservatives. As a result, the party claims to represent "Christian-social, liberal and conservative" elements. The CDU is generally pro-European in outlook.
context_section_description: 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 were landslide 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. The coalition deal was approved by both parties at party conferences on 14 November. 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. 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". 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."
  Although the CDU and CSU lost support in the 2009 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 candidate Christian Wulff won the 2010 presidential election in the third ballot, while opposition candidate Joachim 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 to suspend conscription (late 2010) and to phase out nuclear energy (shortly after the Fukushima 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. Psephologist and Merkel advisor Matthias Jung coined the term "asymmetric demobilisation" for the CDU's strategy (practised in the 2009, 2013 and 2017 campaigns) 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". While this strategy has proven to be quite successful in elections, it also raised warnings that the CDU's profile would become "random", the party would lose its "essence" 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 an early presidential election. This time the CDU supported, reluctantly, nonpartisan candidate Joachim Gauck. The CDU/CSU–FDP coalition lasted until the 2013 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. 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", the Union has had a serious competitor to its right since 2013. The right-wing populist Alternative 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 the European debt crisis (2009–14) and later the 2015 refugee crisis, lamenting a purported loss o
caption: Angela Merkel
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