Adenauer Foundation: Kramp-Karrenbauer wins in opposition to Merz candidate | EUROtoday

Former CDU chief and Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is the brand new chairwoman of the party-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation. At a basic assembly, she prevailed in a first-round vote in opposition to the influential Bundestag member Günter Krings, who had been nominated by Chancellor Friedrich Merz. So it is usually a bitter defeat for the pinnacle of presidency and CDU chairman.

According to the data, the 63-year-old from Saarland, who’s often referred to as AKK for brief, obtained 28 votes and Krings 21 votes within the first spherical of voting. There was one abstention. Kramp-Karrenbauer succeeds Norbert Lammert. The former President of the Bundestag declared in September that he needed to surrender the chairmanship after eight years. He turned 77 in November.

First battle vote in 70 years

For the primary time within the 70-year historical past of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the chairmanship was determined in a aggressive vote. With Kramp-Karrenbauer, the a lot better-known candidate has prevailed. The former Saarland Prime Minister was Defense Minister within the black-red authorities underneath Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2019 to 2021. In 2018, she prevailed in a vote in opposition to Merz for the CDU chairmanship and remained on the head of the occasion for 2 years, which Merz has now led as chairman because the starting of 2022.

Merz spoke out in favor of Krings in November

The Chancellor spoke out in favor of Krings as chairman in a letter to Lammert in mid-November. In it he praises the nationwide and worldwide “extensive experience in many areas of politics and science”. The 56-year-old has been a member of the Bundestag since 2002, is deputy parliamentary group chief for the inner affairs and regulation departments and chairman of the North Rhine-Westphalia regional group within the Union parliamentary group, the CDU’s largest regional group within the Bundestag.

The globally energetic basis bears the title of the primary German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, who dominated from 1949 to 1963. According to its personal data, the muse, based mostly in Berlin and Sankt Augustin close to Bonn, has 95 overseas workplaces with which it helps tasks in over 100 nations. In Germany, her focus is on political training in addition to researching and documenting the event of Christian democracy.