Friedrich Merz and the query of the candidate for chancellor | EUROtoday

FRiedrich Merz sits within the mountain rescue service. A room of maybe 40 sq. meters with mild wooden furnishings. On the tables there are plates with freshly stuffed roll halves, on a espresso cup you may see the face of a bearded previous man with a felt hat, beneath it says “Alpenmax – original Jagatee”. The drink is an Austrian specialty. But Austria and the Alps are tons of of kilometers away. Instead, the Ruhr rises only a few minutes away by automotive.

It's Saturday morning, 9 o'clock, and the CDU chairman is listening to the boys from the mountain rescue staff inform him how they assist skiers who’ve had accidents. Because Merz has a ski resort in his constituency in Hochsauerland. The man who belongs to the small circle of politicians who’ve an opportunity of changing into the following Chancellor should, like each member of the Bundestag, care in regards to the area through which he lives and thru which he’s elected. The ski space in Winterberg is lower than 1000 meters excessive, however affords 27 kilometers of linked slopes.

A politician and his workers can put together such visits properly. It might be deliberate that Merz will arrive on time for the Bobsleigh and Skeleton World Championships presently happening in Winterberg. Not even the CDU chairman's staff can put together for the truth that it’ll begin to snow this Saturday. Lucky. But the boys from the mountain rescue service don't simply need to eat sandwiches with Merz and present him their gear. You have a selected request for the politician who in any other case argues with the Chancellor in Berlin about Taurus cruise missiles for Ukraine or is obtained in Israel by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It's about financing the mountain rescue service in North Rhine-Westphalia. Chancellor's ambitions or not: This is an actual drawback for the boys in his constituency and for the attractiveness of tourism in Winterberg.

Politicians who primarily work in Berlin prefer to level out that standard life takes place within the constituency, not like within the “Berlin bubble”. Merz stated final summer season: “Kreuzberg is not Germany, Gillamoos is Germany.” He wished to make himself widespread as a visitor on the Lower Bavarian beer tent enjoyable, the place the CSU riots rhetorically yearly. For metropolis dwellers it sounded fairly unfriendly. So they have been allowed to really feel like they didn't belong to Germany.

Merz has been holding again for a while with such sayings, which provoke some individuals, however which others contemplate to be efficient in promoting, as a result of the impression is created that Merz speaks the best way many individuals do. Unlike CSU chairman Markus Söder, who appears to consider which slogan he needs to dominate the headlines with within the morning, Merz gives the look that he says such sayings in public in precisely the identical method that he doesn't do it in public. He simply knocks them out. Some worry that this might occur once more sooner or later.

Normal life ought to now be regular within the Hochsauerland district, not Berlin life. Merz skilled how intently the 2 are linked throughout his go to to the mountain rescue service. North Rhine-Westphalia is the one German state through which an injured particular person has to pay for mountain rescue providers themselves as a result of it’s not coated by medical health insurance. The males from the mountain rescue service not need to put vacationers via this. They are hoping for assist from distinguished guests from Berlin.