CDU/CSU
CDU/CSU | |
---|---|
Chairman |
Parties: Angela Merkel (CDU), Horst Seehofer (CSU) Parliament: Ralph Brinkhaus (CDU/CSU group), Alexander Dobrindt (CSU state group) |
Founded | 1949 |
Ideology |
Christian democracy Conservatism Pro-Europeanism |
Political position | Centre-right |
European affiliation | European People's Party |
Seats in the Bundestag |
246 / 709 |
Website | |
www | |
CDU/CSU, unofficially the Union parties (German: Unionsparteien) or the Union, is the centre-right Christian democratic political alliance of two political parties in Germany, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU).
According to German Federal Electoral Law, members of a parliamentary group which share the same basic political aims must not compete with one another in any federal state.[1] The CSU contests elections only in Bavaria, while the CDU operates in the other 15 states of Germany. The CSU also reflects the particular concerns of the largely rural, Catholic south.[2] While the two Christian Democratic parties are commonly described as sister parties and have been sharing a common parliamentary group in the Bundestag, the "CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group in the German Bundestag"[3] (German: CDU/CSU-Fraktion im Deutschen Bundestag[4]) since the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, the parties themselves officially remain completely independent with their own leadership and only few issue- or age-based joint organisations, which makes the alliance informal. In practice, however, the committees of the parties harmonise their decisions with each other and the leader of one party is usually invited to party conventions of the other party.
Both the CDU and CSU are members of the European People's Party and International Democrat Union, and share a common youth organisation, the Young Union. Both parties sit in the European People's Party group in the European Parliament.
History
Both the CDU and the CSU were established after World War II and share a perspective based on Christian democracy and conservatism, and hold the dominant centre-right position in the German political spectrum. The CSU is usually considered the de facto successor of the Weimar Republic–era Bavarian People's Party, which itself broke away from the all-German Catholic Centre Party after World War I. The CDU's foundation however was the result of a major re-organisation of the centre-right political camp compared to the Weimar Republic. Though the CDU was largely built as the de facto successor of the Centre Party, it successfully opened out to non-Catholic Christians, many of them affiliated with the German People's Party until 1933, and successfully asserted itself as the only major conservative party (outside of Bavaria) against initial competition from other Catholic, Protestant or nationalist conservative parties such as the German Party during the early years of the Federal Republic.
Political stances
The CDU and the CSU usually only differ slightly in their political stances.
The CSU is usually considered a bit more socially conservative (especially on family issues, e.g. the CSU favors providing infants' parents with compensation (Betreuungsgeld) if they intend not to use the public day nursery system to work[5] while the CDU favors public funding of day nurseries). The CSU government in Bavaria has implemented one of the strictest regulations for shopping hours in Germany in order to protect employees. The CSU also strongly opposed ideas of an income unrelated system of contributions to public health insurances, a proposal which met a lot of approval in the CDU in 2010.[6]
CSU politicians often make their mark as self-declared defenders of Bavaria's state rights and cultural independence from federal or EU bureaucrats, even in times of conservative federal governments or conservative presidents of the European Commission. In 1998, then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the CDU had to pressure the CSU intensely not to veto the introduction of the euro as the new currency in Germany.[7] On the other hand the name "Euro" was the idea of former CSU chairman Theo Waigel who served as finance minister when the Euro was introduced and held a very pro-European position in contrast to the Bavarian Government of Edmund Stoiber. The CSU has, since 2016, strongly been advocating the idea of a maximum number (Obergrenze) of 200,000 people per year to limit the number of asylum seekers. This is opposed by the CDU because they claim that it is impossible to limit the number through border control.[8]
While both parties officially identify themselves as non-denominational Christian, the Catholic influence on the CSU is far stronger than that on the CDU, since Bavaria is predominantly Catholic, while Christians in Germany as a whole are approximately equally balanced between Catholics and Protestants. There are nevertheless strong regional differences within Bavaria and Germany as a whole with large predominantly Protestant areas in northern Bavaria and large predominantly Catholic areas in North Rhine-Westphalia and South Western Germany having a strong effect on CDU state politicians. E.g. Saarland's former CDU minister-president Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer heavily opposed same-sex marriages in July 2017 while the CDU in Schleswig-Holstein was in favor, Saarland having the largest share of Catholic Christians in any German state.
Tensions
The differences between the CDU and the somewhat more socially conservative CSU have sometimes led to conflicts in the past. These tensions climaxed during the 1970s, when Helmut Kohl became CDU chairman in 1973, then considered a moderate or even progressive politician and also a personal foe of the right-wing then-CSU chairman Franz Josef Strauss, who had held that office since 1961.
Brief 1976 separation
After the CDU/CSU narrowly lost the West German federal election of 1976 which had seen Kohl as the common chancellor candidate of the two parties, the CSU's future Bundestag representatives met on November 19, 1976 at a closed meeting at Wildbad Kreuth, at a Hanns Seidel Foundation compound, which is CSU's educational foundation. With a vote of 30–18 and one abstention (and one invalid vote), the CSU deputies decided to separate from their common faction with the CDU deputies in the Bundestag. The decision had been initiated by CSU chairman Strauss, then himself a Bundestag deputy.
The official reasons were to create a more effective opposition (the CDU would approach moderate conservatives, while the CSU would approach the right) and gain more speaking time in parliament.
As a party chairman, Strauss also announced that in addition the CSU as a party would terminate its self-restriction to Bavaria and foster the foundation of local CSU associations outside of the party's home state, running in all future German federal and state elections against the CDU on a distinctly more conservative platform than the CDU's. Strauss therefore coined the term Vierte Partei (fourth party, after the CDU, the Social Democrats and the Free Democrats). This term was technically misleading, since the CSU had always been a distinct party from the CDU, therefore four parties had already been represented during previous Bundestag terms.
On December 12, 1976, the vote was rescinded after the CDU had threatened in turn to form local associations within Bavaria and to run in Bavarian elections against the CSU.
2018 refugee dispute
In 2018, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, a former Minister-President of Bavaria and the leader of the CSU, opposed CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel's policy on Syrian refugees in Germany. Seehofer hoped to place restrictions on incoming refugees, many of whom enter the country through Bavaria; his stance was seen as being in part motivated by the Bavarian elections in 2018, in which it was feared that the right-wing Alternative for Germany would make gains. The dispute threatened to bring down the Merkel government, which relied on the CSU for its parliamentary majority, as Seehofer had indicated his resignation on July 2, 2018 but already rescinded it a day letter, after an agreement over the issue between the coalition parties CDU, CSU and SPD had been reached.[9]
Leaders of the Group in the Bundestag
- Konrad Adenauer (1949)
- Heinrich von Brentano di Tremezzo (1949–55)
- Heinrich Krone (1955–61)
- Heinrich von Brentano di Tremezzo (1961–64)
- Rainer Barzel (1964–73)
- Karl Carstens (1973–76)
- Helmut Kohl (1976–82)
- Alfred Dregger (1982–91)
- Wolfgang Schäuble (1991–2000)
- Friedrich Merz (2000–02)
- Angela Merkel (2002–05)
- Volker Kauder (2005–18)
- Ralph Brinkhaus (2018–present)[10]
Federal Parliament (Bundestag)
Election year | Chancellor candidate | CDU | CSU | CDU/CSU | Gov't? | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
# of constituency votes |
# of party list votes |
% of party list votes |
# of constituency votes |
# of party list votes |
% of party list votes |
% of party list votes |
# of seats |
% of seats |
+/– | ||||
1949 | Konrad Adenauer (CDU) | 5,978,636 | 25.2 | 1,380,448 | 5.8 | 31.0 | 139 / 402 |
34.6 | Yes | ||||
1953 | 9,577,659 | 10,016,594 | 36.4 | 2,450,286 | 2,427,387 | 8.8 | 45.2 | 249 / 509 |
48.9 | Yes | |||
1957 | 11,975,400 | 11,875,339 | 39.7 | 3,186,150 | 3,133,060 | 10.5 | 50.2 | 277 / 519 |
53.3 | Yes | |||
1961 | 11,622,995 | 11,283,901 | 35.8 | 3,104,742 | 3,014,471 | 9.6 | 45.4 | 251 / 521 |
48.2 | Yes | |||
1965 | 12,631,319 | 12,387,562 | 38.0 | 3,204,648 | 3,136,506 | 9.6 | 47.6 | 251 / 518 |
48.5 | Yes | |||
1969 | Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU) | 12,137,148 | 12,079,535 | 36.6 | 3,094,176 | 3,115,652 | 9.5 | 46.1 | 250 / 518 |
48.3 | No | ||
1972 | Rainer Barzel (CDU) | 13,304,813 | 13,190,837 | 35.2 | 3,620,625 | 3,615,183 | 9.7 | 44.9 | 234 / 518 |
45.2 | No | ||
1976 | Helmut Kohl (CDU) | 14,423,157 | 14,367,302 | 38.0 | 4,008,514 | 4,027,499 | 10.6 | 48.6 | 254 / 518 |
49.0 | No | ||
1980 | Franz Josef Strauß (CSU) | 13,467,207 | 12,989,200 | 34.2 | 3,941,365 | 3,908,459 | 10.3 | 44.5 | 237 / 519 |
45.7 | No | ||
1983 | Helmut Kohl (CDU) | 15,943,460 | 14,857,680 | 38.1 | 4,318,800 | 4,140,865 | 10.6 | 48.7 | 255 / 520 |
49.0 | Yes | ||
1987 | 14,168,527 | 13,045,745 | 34.4 | 3,859,244 | 3,715,827 | 9.8 | 44.2 | 234 / 519 |
45.1 | Yes | |||
1990 | 17,707,574 | 17,055,116 | 36.7 | 3,423,904 | 3,302,980 | 7.1 | 43.8 | 319 / 662 |
48.2 | Yes | |||
1994 | 17,473,325 | 16,089,960 | 34.2 | 3,657,627 | 3,427,196 | 7.3 | 41.5 | 294 / 672 |
43.8 | Yes | |||
1998 | 15,854,215 | 14,004,908 | 28.4 | 3,602,472 | 3,324,480 | 6.8 | 35.2 | 245 / 669 |
36.6 | No | |||
2002 | Edmund Stoiber (CSU) | 15,336,512 | 14,167,561 | 29.5 | 4,311,178 | 4,315,080 | 9.0 | 38.5 | 248 / 603 |
41.1 | No | ||
2005 | Angela Merkel (CDU) | 15,390,950 | 13,136,740 | 27.8 | 3,889,990 | 3,494,309 | 7.4 | 35.2 | 226 / 614 |
36.8 | Yes | ||
2009 | 13,856,674 | 11,828,277 | 27.3 | 3,191,000 | 2,830,238 | 6.5 | 33.8 | 239 / 622 |
38.4 | Yes | |||
2013 | 16,233,642 | 14,921,877 | 34.1 | 3,544,079 | 3,243,569 | 7.4 | 41.5 | 311 / 631 |
49.3 | Yes | |||
2017 | 14,027,804 | 12,445,832 | 26.8 | 3,255,604 | 2,869,744 | 6.2 | 33.0 | 246 / 709 |
34.7 | Yes |
See also
References
- ↑ “Federal Electoral Law“ German Law Archive, accessed December 18, 2016
- ↑ “Christian Democrat Union/Christian Social Union” Country Studies, Germany, accessed December 18, 2016
- ↑ "Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) parliamentary group". German Bundestag. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
- ↑ "Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) parliamentary group". German Bundestag. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
- ↑ "Care money a complete success". www.csu.de (in German). Retrieved 2017-09-25.
- ↑ "CDU health experts Spahn: Reform is an opportunity for black and yellow". sueddeutsche.de (in German). 2010-06-03. ISSN 0174-4917. Retrieved 2017-09-25.
- ↑ Wirtgen, Klaus (1997-10-13). "The Stoiber system". Der Spiegel. 42. Retrieved 2017-09-25.
- ↑ GmbH, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (2017-07-29). "CSU chief Seehofer pounds on upper limit". FAZ.NET. Retrieved 2017-09-25.
- ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/world/europe/germany-merkel-coalition.html
- ↑ "Members of parliament, members of parliament and political group staff - they function as a whole and ensure that the parties' policies are put into practice". CDU/CSU-Fraktion. Retrieved 2017-09-25.